Patrick Eggen
Founding General Partner
Previously Patrick was the Managing Director of Qualcomm Ventures North America where he led all U.S. investments (~$500M AUM). He scaled the U.S. fund to 80+ investments across all stages and sectors. He also elevated the group to think with the mindset of a financial VC based on pure financial returns, domain expertise and activist investor role (leading rounds and taking board seats). He drove key thought leadership around all current core investment themes ranging from hardware, software, adjacent verticals and frontier tech. Based on last 13 years of direct venture investment experience, personally involved in 100+ transactions and 30+ exits. Patrick opened and led Qualcomm Ventures’ SF Bay Area practice. Additionally he founded Qualcomm’s Global Early Stage Fund, focused on Seed and Series A opportunities.
This Early Stage Fund was the first of its kind in any Corporate Venture Capital organization. Under his leadership, he scaled the Fund to 70+ investments, which include big wins such as Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM), Matterport (NASDAQ:MTTR), Noom, Cruise Automation (acquired by GM) and 99 (acquired by Didi). Patrick led the Zoom investment which was the largest absolute return in QCV history. He actively sourced or served as a Board Member/Observer for QCV investments in Clarifai, Cloudflare, Matterport, Noom, OpenSignal, Particle, Plivo, Sense360, Sparta Science, and Swift Nav. Additionally he worked very closely and co-sponsored Ring (acquired by AMZN) and Waze (acquired by GOOG). Prior investments (exits) include Aicent, Avaak (acquired by NTGR), Divide (acquired by GOOG), Clicker (acquired by CBS), Magisto (acquired by IAC), Starmaker, Tempo.AI (acquired by CRM), ThinkNear (acquired by TNAV) and Viewdle (acquired by GOOG).
Prior to joining Qualcomm Ventures, Patrick worked for Citigroup Investment Banking unit in their Chicago, London and Hong Kong offices. Patrick has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.A. from Northwestern University.
Joe Saijo
Founding General Partner
Joe’s background is in IT where he started his career as a software engineer in Japan and then worked with Hitachi.
From 2007-2011 Joe was the Manager of Business Development at Hitachi and from 2014-2017 he served as the President and Managing Partner at Recruit Strategic Partners, the CVC vehicle of Recruit Holdings, Japan’s largest HR/media company.
Joe was responsible for the investment and portfolio strategy of Recruit Strategic Partners, managing over 100 portfolio companies worldwide (40 of which were based in the US).
Joe shifted the organization’s geographic focus towards the US market, and successfully invested in 30 startups over a 3.5 year period in San Francisco. Whilst at Recruit Strategic Partners, his most notable investments include Palo Alto Networks(NYSE : PANW), DocuSign(NASDAQ: DOCU), 99designs(Acq’d by Vistaprint), Noom, DataRobot and ShipBob. Joe was responsible for transforming Recruit’s investment arm to a disciplined and agile CVC unit with a fast decision-making process, thesis and financially driven strategy. Joe also helped Recruit’s portfolio companies develop their businesses in Japan through his network.
Joe’s expertise is in B2B SaaS and marketplace technologies.
Mikey Kailis
Principal
Mikey grew up in Perth, Western Australia where he attended the University of Notre Dame (BA) & University of Western Australia (MCom). Mikey worked as a journalist after completing his Bachelor of Arts in 2011. Following journalism he studied business management and began working with and advising startups, most recently in the mining and resources industry. From 2013 to 2015 he helped create an Asia Pacific wide competition aimed at identifying and funding promising early stage startups by providing access to capital and Silicon Valley investors.
From 2015 to 2018 Mikey worked with mining and resources companies to identify promising startups that could solve challenges facing the industry. In this role Mikey helped incubate startups and host events where industry and innovation met. He worked with digital transformation teams and holds a keen interest in bringing about disruption to traditional industries such as mining, agriculture, food, logistics, supply chain and transport.
Mikey plays an active role with Counterpart’s founders, brokering introductions to customers, assisting hiring and go to market.
Mikey joined Counterpart at the beginning in 2018 to lay the early foundations for our brand. He helps source deals, manage general operations, marketing and our corporate venture capital network Counter Club. Mikey was born in Australia but his family originates from Greece and he is active within California’s Greek community. Mikey’s idol is his late Papou, after whom he is named. Mikey is also die hard Man Utd fan and slowly becoming a hard core Milwaukee Bucks fan with allegiance to Giannis Antetokounmpo. On the weekends he is usually cycling in LA or hunting down the best cortado.
Tanvi Narain
Senior Associate
Tanvi grew up between India, US, and Switzerland and attended McGill University (BA) & Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management (MBA). Tanvi spent the first 6 years of her career in financial services and payments at Discover Financial and Visa where she held roles in marketing and product management. While at Discover Financial, she helped build B2B payment solutions in partnership with SAP Ariba and advised the executive team on investment opportunities in B2B payment verticals and product build. She also led the Young Professionals Innovation Committee that organized events geared to tackle business problems across the organization with a design-thinking framework. While at Visa, she managed the credit product strategy of the top 100 US issuing banks. She led the development and implementation of the rewards platform that would optimize card usage and payment volume for banking partners.
After completing her MBA, Tanvi worked at Plaid where she managed a range of growth stage fintech customers; advising them on products opportunities & go-to-market strategies. Tanvi’s expertise lies in fintech, payments, & banking software solutions.
Tanvi has a keen interest in identifying meaningful product opportunities that would address key customer/business pain-points and fostering those companies’ growth and development. Tanvi joined Counterpart in January 2022 to source new investment opportunities that fit the fund’s B2B strategy, specifically with a fintech lens. In her role, Tanvi will source new deals, manage deal flow, and evaluate prospective investments at Seed and Series A. Given our hands on approach with our portfolio companies, Tanvi will also work alongside our CEOs to help on customer acquisition, recruiting, and operations.
She enjoys going on hikes, listening to podcasts about history, taking dance lessons and testing out her improv skills with the Counterpart team!
Abbie Wolf
Platform & Marketing Analyst
Abbie grew up outside of New York and attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism (BA). Abbie led Northwestern’s Women’s Basketball to a 2020 Big Ten Regular Season Championship and went on to play three years of professional basketball in Europe. She competed for FC Barcelona and Club Deportivo Zamarat in Spain, along with the Caledonia Gladiators in Glasgow, Scotland.
Off the court, she contributed to brand identity and growth for sports lifestyle start-ups round21 and Athena Interactive. She worked on brand strategy projects for Nike, Masterclass and Colgate while at SYLVAIN, a strategy and design consultancy.
She also founded Wild Works Connects, a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the mission of empowering the next generation of female athletes that has become an international host family network.
Abbie first joined the Counterpart Team as a Transition Play fellow, a talent bridge started by Alana Beard that connects women athlete professionals to companies, civic organizations, and social impact initiatives where they can put their competition-honed transferable skills to work for the good of all. After leading the operations behind the Counter IV Conference, Abbie joined the Counterpart Team full-time. She primarily organizes content and events on the Counter Club, our community of corporate venture capitalists, while also supporting support general deal flow, marketing and operations.