Susan Mason

Summary

Susan Mason has over 25 years of operating management and venture capital experience. She is Managing Partner and co-founder of Aligned Partners and Iolar Ventures, Menlo Park-based venture capital firms that invest in highly capital efficient start-ups in the IT area. Prior to co-founding Aligned Partners and Iolar Ventures, she spent 15 years with ONSET Ventures, a venture capital firm with $1 billion under management that is focused on early stage investing. In 1996 she was named a Kauffman Fellow and joined ONSET Ventures.There she specialized in investing in the information technology area, specifically communications and security. Prior to joining the venture world, she held positions in high-technology engineering, marketing and business development. She led a highly successful consulting practice, helping Fortune 1000 corporations capitalize on emerging markets and technologies. Early in her career, she held positions in marketing and engineering design of high-performance systems and microprocessors for Fujitsu Microelectronics, Fairchild Semiconductor and NCR Microelectronics. Susan received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Colorado and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a regular guest speaker on entrepreneurial topics at Stanford University, UCLA and many of the local events in Silicon Valley. She is a founding board member of the Center for Venture Education, which operates the Kauffman Fellows Program. She has served as its Chairman for the past four years and continues to serve on the board as Chair Emeritus. She also served on the Finance and Investment Committee of the City of Los Altos Hills, CA for 2 years. She was a board member of Sustainable Community Gardens, a non-profit which operates community gardens and an 11-acre farm providing education and delivery of quality fruits and vegetables to low-income children and adults in Sunnyvale, CA for 6 years.