Vinnie Lauria is a two-time Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. He is the Founding Partner of Golden Gate Ventures, a global early-stage VC firm launched in 2011 with US$300M in AUM and 100+ investments. Over the past 15 years, Vinnie has served on more than a dozen startup boards, including unicorns like Carro and Carousell. He was an early investor in Stripe and AngelList, and helped take startups like Lomotif public on the NYSE. Vinnie is also the co-author of the forthcoming global business guidebook, Mind the Gap: Scaling Businesses Across Cultures (Wiley, 2026). Before founding Golden Gate Ventures, Vinnie built two startups in Silicon Valley: Meetro, a pioneering location-based chat app (shut down with many lessons learned in 2007); and Lefora, a social network platform acquired by a public media company in 2010. He also founded Silicon Valley NewTech, one of the Bay Area’s largest startup demo events at the time.
