AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LiveOak Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Austin, Texas, is delighted to announce the expansion of its investment team with the addition of Paola Retes as Vice President. This addition to the team coincides with the launch of the firm’s third fund, a $210M fund focused on early-stage companies based in Texas.
“The hiring of Paola coincides with the close of our third fund late last year; we knew we would need another experienced investor to support the abundant activity in the Texas market. Paola’s background in various operating and investment roles will be an asset to LiveOak and our portfolio companies as we look to scale the firm to the next level,” said Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners.
Paola joins LiveOak after graduating from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where her main extracurricular activity was as a founding board member of Galvanizer, a nonprofit incubator for female founders. Before business school, Paola was an early employee at Ironspring Ventures. She assisted in all aspects of company formation and served as lead associate in the firm’s investments in ICON, Fast Radius, and Mercado Labs. Her investment experience covers multiple stages and industries, focusing on enterprise software. Earlier in her career, Paola held various operating and investing roles at Holt Ventures, Becton Dickinson, Deloitte, and Matterhorn Capital Management. Paola also holds a CFA® charter.
As a native of Honduras, Paola is passionate about partnering with diverse and underrepresented founders to help bring their unique vision to life. She added, “ I am proud to call Texas home for more than a decade and am excited to return to Austin and join the team at LiveOak to support the world-class entrepreneurs in this vibrant and growing ecosystem.”
“In addition to her experience as a software investor, we are excited to have Paola drive the implementation of some of the best practices she developed at Stanford to attract and work with diverse and underrepresented Founders,” added LiveOak Founding Partner Venu Shamapant.
About LiveOak Venture Partners
LiveOak Venture Partners is a venture capital fund based in Austin, Texas. With over 20 years of successful venture investing in Texas, the founders of LiveOak have helped create nearly $5 billion of enterprise value. While almost all LiveOak's investments begin in the early stages, LiveOak is a complete life cycle investor focused on technology and technology-enabled service companies based in Texas. With close to $500M under management, LiveOak Venture Partners has been the lead investor in over 50 exciting high-growth Texas-based companies in the last decade, including DISCO (NYSE: LAW), Digital Pharmacist, Eventus, OJO Labs, Opcity, Homeward, and TrustRadius. The firm was recognized as the Venture Capital Firm of the year in Austin in the 2022 inaugural A-List awards by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.
