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Karim Faris
General Partner at Google Ventures
Karim Faris is a General Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), where he has been since the firm's inception in 2009.13 He leads GV's investments in enterprise software, data analytics, and security.24
Career Background
Karim has an extensive career in technology and venture capital:
- He joined Google's corporate development team in 2008, working on mergers and acquisitions.24
- Prior to Google, he was a venture capitalist at Atlas Venture from 2002 to 2007.3
- He served as Director of New Ventures at Level 3 Communications from 1999 to 2002.3
- Earlier in his career, Karim held product and marketing roles at Intel, including as product manager for the Pentium processor.13
- He started his career at Siemens as a software engineer, working on the first vehicle navigation system for BMW.12
Education
Karim holds impressive academic credentials:
- MBA from Harvard Business School13
- M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan13
- B.S. in Computer Engineering from Brown University, where he published papers on neural networks12
Investment Focus
At GV, Karim focuses on:
He is particularly interested in how the IT stack is reorganizing and how learning algorithms are expanding our ability to gain insights from large amounts of data.1
Investment Philosophy
Karim is drawn to mission-driven founders with a "healthy disregard for the impossible".1 He values the experience of partnering with entrepreneurs at the early stages of challenging the status quo and helping them turn ideas into valuable companies.1
Languages
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Karim is multilingual:
- Native or bilingual proficiency in Arabic and French
- Limited working proficiency in German3
Karim Faris brings a wealth of experience in technology, venture capital, and entrepreneurship to his role at GV, making him a valuable partner for startups in the enterprise software, analytics, and security sectors.
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