Kathryn C. Gould, cofounder and general partner of Foundation Capital, earned a degree in physics from the University of Toronto in 1973 and her MBA from Chicago Booth in 1978. Gould acquired her taste for start-ups at one of the wildest and most successful —Oracle Corporation, which she joined as vice president for marketing. While there, she realized she wanted to build companies, not run them.
Gould's extremely successful venture capital career began in 1989 as a general partner with Merrill, Pickard, Anderson & Eyre, a West Coast venture capital firm that had five funds totaling $300 million in assets under management. In 1995, Gould cofounded Foundation Capital, a venture capital firm working with start-up founders and management teams to build outstanding companies.
By 2005, Foundation Capital managed $75 million in funds invested across networking, communications, computer software, and other technology-based firms, sinking increments of $1 to $4 million in a select group of early-stage, high-potential start-ups and making Gould one of the most accomplished venture capitalists in the field.