MiriamRivera

An open source network of angel investors and entrepreneurs might sound like vaporware, but Miriam Rivera built one in the heart of Stanford’s innovation community. Now the managing partner of Ulu Ventures, Rivera prefers to stay hands on with her investments. Lucky for them, too — she’s had a major role in some of the biggest companies and most promising new entrants in modern tech history.

Miriam’s Bio:

Miriam co-founded Ulu Ventures, where she is the Managing Partner. Ulu is an early stage angel fund focused on IT investments and has made 30 investments in the last three years.

She is also the co-founder and co-president of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, an “open source network” of Stanford alumni investors and entrepreneurs. Miriam has taught in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program in the School of Engineering on start-up board issues and is a mentor in entrepreneurship at the Stanford GSB. She is also a Kauffman Fellow in venture capital. As a first generation college student and scholarship recipient, Miriam graduated from Stanford University where she earned the AB, AM, and JD/MBA degrees.

Miriam has worked at all stages of new ventures, from formation to Fortune 500 public company Google Inc. At Google, Miriam was the second attorney, and helped build the legal team from 2 to over 150 worldwide. She increased Google’s revenue velocity by re-engineering the sales contracting process to allow 80+% of ad deals to close in three days (50% in one day), helping revenue grow from $85M in revenue to $10B in five years. She was Google’s first internally promoted VP in a SG&A function (and the second internally promoted VP in a non-engineering function) as Vice President/ Deputy General Counsel.

Prior to joining in 2001, she served as in-house counsel for Ariba and co-founded Outcome Software (an angel and venture-backed software company). At Outcome, she acted as Secretary to the Board and VP finance, legal and business operations.