Brian Feinstein
Partner / Growth
San Francisco Bay Area, US
About Brian
Brian is a partner in the San Francisco office and he focuses on investments in enterprise software. He is passionate about working with founders who are shaping their industries and often don’t fit the Silicon Valley mold.
Brian has been at Bessemer since 2008 and has invested in 5 companies that have gone public. Brian led the first institutional investments in Procore (IPO), Wildlife Studios, Restaurant365, Enjoei (IPO), and Ada, early-stage investments in Weave, Mambu, TractionGuest, and Clio, and growth-stage investments in nCino (IPO) and Bumble (IPO). Brian also led growth buyouts of LiveAuctioneers and Beyond.
During his time at Bessemer, Brian supported investments in Gainsight, Mindbody (IPO), Playdom and helped found Columbia Lake Partners, a European venture debt fund. Prior to Bessemer, Brian worked in the private equity group at Blackstone and founded an online advertising agency.
Brian graduated from Harvard University and sits on the board of the Heckscher Foundation for Children.
AI
Enterprise
Fintech
Marketplaces
Vertical
Q&A
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The quality you most admire in a founder is...
Perseverance. It took Tooey Courtemanche a decade to get Procore from zero to $10M of ARR, and another decade to get from $10M to $1B. Most people quit somewhere in the first decade.
Latest News & Research
18 Total Posts
News
Devin's next commit
Bessemer’s thesis for investing in Cognition and the future of agentic software development.
News
Fireworks: the inference layer for the open model era
Bessemer Venture Partners joins Fireworks' $1.5B Series D, backing the leading training and inference platform for open models as the company crosses $1B in ARR.
Playbook
Building Vertical AI: An early stage playbook for founders
Essential insights and best practices for AI startups ambitious enough to reimagine technology across vertical industries.
Article
Inside Bessemer’s operating model
Dive into Bessemer’s origin story and how it shapes the way the firm makes investments today — embracing collaboration, intellectual honesty, and rethinking traditions.
Article
Part IV: Ten principles for building strong vertical AI businesses
In the final installment of the Vertical AI Roadmap, we share our investment framework and essential advice for founders on how to drive early-stage value and defensibility.
Article
Part III: Business model invention in the AI era
Copilots, agents, and AI-enabled services are three new models delivering the benefits of artificial intelligence to vertical industries.