Ilya Sukhar

General Partner at matrix-partners

Reviewed Updated Aug 30, 2026

This profile is AI-generated. If you spot an error, please help us fix it by sharing a URL to the correct information.

Location San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Check Size $2M-$10M
Last Verified Investment Flock Safety (Series I) — 2026
Social @isukhar LinkedIn
Stage Focus
seed series-a
Sector Focus
developer-tools ai data-infrastructure enterprise saas

Background

Ilya Sukhar is a General Partner at Matrix Partners (which now operates as Matrix), a US early-stage venture firm 1 2. He immigrated from the USSR as a child and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, later studying Computer Science and Operations Research at Cornell University 1.

Sukhar was co-founder and CEO of Parse, a mobile backend-as-a-service platform founded in 2011 with Tikhon Bernstam, Kevin Lacker, and James Yu 3. Parse was acquired by Facebook in 2013 for approximately $85 million; Sukhar remained at Facebook after the acquisition 3. Parse was open-sourced in 2016 and its hosted service was shut down on January 30, 2017 3.

Before joining Matrix in 2016, Sukhar worked on three startups that were all acquired 2. He was also a partner at Y Combinator prior to Matrix 1. He is an active angel investor and maintains Vimium, a widely used Chrome extension providing keyboard-driven browser navigation 1.

Stated Thesis

Sukhar’s public writing and Matrix profile describe his focus as early-stage B2B software, with particular emphasis on developer tools, AI, data infrastructure, and enterprise software in the US and Canada 2 4.

Matrix’s current team page groups Sukhar’s investing under “AI and Infrastructure” 4.

Inferred Thesis

Based on Sukhar’s Signal NFX profile (53 investments on record; 36 with published stage/round data) and the Matrix team page 2 4:

Stage distribution (from 8 recent rounds on Signal NFX with stage data): - Seed: 3 of 8 (38%) — Lemon Slice, Double, Reflect - Series A: 3 of 8 (38%) — Conductor, Speckle, Chameleon - Series B: 1 of 8 (13%) — Parabola - Later (Series I): 1 of 8 (13%) — Flock Safety

This is consistent with a general partner writing lead checks at seed and Series A, with follow-on into growth rounds of portfolio winners 2.

Sector distribution: Sukhar’s active board seats and portfolio are concentrated in infrastructure and developer-facing software. Board seats: August Health, Thunder Compute, Chameleon, Parabola, Mashgin, Fivetran, Sieve 2 4. Notable additional Matrix and prior angel investments: Scale AI, GitLab, Airtable, Applied Intuition 1 2.

Check sizes: Signal reports a check-size range of $100K–$10M with a “sweet spot” of $2M, on a fund of $800M — typical seed-and-Series-A leadership at a mid-size venture platform 2.

Sample size caveat: Analysis based on the 8 recent rounds with stage data on Signal NFX out of 53 total. Percentages describe recent portfolio composition, not the full history.

Portfolio

Company Year Stage Source
Airtable ~2015 Angel 1 2
GitLab ~2015 Angel 1 2
Scale AI ~2016 Angel 1 2
Applied Intuition ~2017 Angel 1
Fivetran ~2018 Series (Matrix) 2 4
Mashgin ~2019 Series (Matrix) 2 4
August Health ~2020 Series (Matrix) 2 4
Thunder Compute ~2023 Seed 2 4
Chameleon 2022 Series A ($13M) 2
Reflect 2023 Seed ($1M) 2
Parabola 2023 Series B ($24M) 2
Speckle 2024 Series A ($13M) 2
Double 2024 Seed ($3M) 2
Lemon Slice 2025 Seed ($11M) 2
Conductor 2026 Series A ($22M) 2
Flock Safety 2026 Series I ($200M) 2

Portfolio coverage: 16 of 53 recorded investments (~30%). Angel investments predating Matrix (Airtable, GitLab, Scale AI, Applied Intuition) are dated by company founding as year of first check.

In Their Own Words

No independently sourced verbatim first-person quotes from Sukhar were located in this research pass. Sukhar has appeared on multiple podcasts, including 20VC (“How The Seed Ecosystem Could Be Optimised, Why The Bar For The Break-Out Series A Has Risen & The Art of Effective Referencing”) 5 and the 1st10 podcast (“From YC and Beyond”) 6, but a transcript with directly quotable text was not available for verification during this pass. A future update should transcribe and cite specific passages.

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. Matrix does not publish first-person founder testimonials for Sukhar on its team page 4.

Sources

  1. Ilya Sukhar personal website, accessed August 2026. https://ilya.sukhar.com/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. Signal by NFX, “Ilya Sukhar investor profile,” accessed August 2026. https://signal.nfx.com/investors/ilya-sukhar↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Wikipedia, “Parse, Inc.,” accessed August 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parse,_Inc.↩↩↩

  4. Matrix, “Ilya Sukhar — Team page,” accessed August 2026. https://matrix.vc/team/ilya-sukhar/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  5. The Twenty Minute VC (20VC), “Matrix’s Ilya Sukhar on How The Seed Ecosystem Could Be Optimised, Why The Bar For The Break-Out Series A Has Risen & The Art of Effective Referencing,” accessed August 2026. https://thetwentyminutevc.libsyn.com/20vc-matrixs-ilya-sukhar-on-how-the-seed-ecosystem-could-be-optimised-why-the-bar-for-the-break-out-series-a-has-risen-the-art-of-effective-referencing↩

  6. 1st10 Podcast, “From YC and Beyond: Matrix Ventures GP Ilya Sukhar on Startups, Acquisitions, and Venture Capital,” Spotify, accessed August 2026. https://open.spotify.com/episode/10djJ9x2n0dmRV64i2hFxe↩