Michael Downing

Summary

Michael is a pioneering Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur and VC who co-founded 6 leading-edge software/technology companies over the last 20+ years, of which 3 were acquired and one resulted in an IPO. These companies include one of the first Internet Music services in 1997 that helped kick off the online music revolution, the first industry-licensed online music subscription service in 1999, one of the first consumer online video platforms in 2002 (that went public in 2006), and a distributed media platform technology that forever changed the playbook for building a global 100M unique viewer audience. Michael, who co-founded Kicklabs, an early startup co-working space in downtown San Francisco in 2008, has been an enthusiastic and tireless angel investor and advisor for over 60 technology start-ups trying to make a dent in the universe. A few of his noteworthy angel investments include Notion, FalconX and Mercury. Downing has been an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at SRI International (Stanford Research Institute) since 2009. Leveraging 28 years of experience as a technology entrepreneur and operator, Michael founded MDSV Capital in 2021 to deliver 𝗘𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮 𝗮𝘁 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 by investing in the top 1% of emerging manager funds for balanced exposure to early-stage Alpha and investing directly in the ‘early-growth’ stage outliers arising from their portfolios. Palo Alto-based MDSV Capital is recognized for building the foremost ecosystem of top-tier emerging manager funds (EMFs) and LPs actively investing in venture.