Sara Deshpande

Sara Deshpande is a General Partner at Maven Ventures, a Seed venture fund specializing in consumer software best known for its early investments in companies like Zoom, Embark Trucks, and Cruise Automation. She specializes in emerging consumer trends including digital health and personalized medicine, consumer applications of AI, consumer climate, family tech, and other high-growth consumer software. At Maven, Sara has led pioneering investments in personalized healthcare companies including Daybreak Health, Hello Heart, Carrot Fertility, and Nest Genomics.

Sara was the first employee at Maven and has built her career investing in early stage founders. She has worked with startups around the globe for 15 years, including at The Idea Village in New Orleans where she developed a love for helping founders articulate and achieve a bold vision against all odds. She is Lecturer in Management at the Stanford GSB where she teaches a popular MBA elective course on startups and is a regular contributor to Forbes on Venture Capital. Earlier in her career, Sara was a management consultant in the Healthcare Strategy practice at Deloitte. Sara holds a BS in Finance from Xavier University in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio and an MBA from Stanford.