Lars Leckie

Background

Lars Leckie is a Managing Director at Aspenwood Ventures (formerly Hummer Winblad Venture Partners / HWVP), a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specializing in early-stage enterprise software ¹². He joined HWVP in 2006 and was promoted to Managing Director in 2011 ³⁴. In July 2021, he and fellow Managing Director Steve Kishi led the firm’s rebrand to Aspenwood Ventures, closing a $70 million fund ⁵⁶.

Before venture capital, Leckie was a co-founder of AutoFarm (now Novariant), a company focused on GPS and robotics, where he led strategy, product marketing, business development, and built the sales team across three continents ¹². His early technical career involved coding and computer game development, and he holds several US patents ¹².

Leckie holds an Engineering Physics degree (with Honors) from Queen’s University in Canada, a Master of Science in Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business ¹²⁷.

He is Canadian-born, a former member of the Canadian Sailing Team, and represented Canada sailing Snipes in the Pan American Games and other international competitions ¹². He is a founding charter member and former co-chair of C100, an organization supporting Canadians in Silicon Valley ¹⁸.

Stated Thesis

Leckie and Aspenwood Ventures publicly describe their focus as investing in early-stage enterprise software companies, providing first institutional capital through growth stages, and targeting founding teams solving hard problems with proven track records ⁶.

Leckie has stated that “small, focused funds do the best by their investors” with an ideal range of “$35 million to $50 million per partner” ³. He has described the current environment as a good time to “quietly invest in enterprise and SaaS infrastructure” ³.

On AI, Leckie has argued it will likely expand the enterprise software market rather than contract it, comparing the current AI wave to the cloud computing era: “The betting on history would be it’ll grow the market, it’ll be fabulous” ⁹.

In a LinkedIn article on the “Series AI Funding Gap,” Leckie identified a significant market dynamic where seed-funded founders face unexpectedly high investor expectations, with investors now demanding “$5M ARR” and “500% year-over-year growth” compared to historical baselines of “$1-2M ARR” with “100-200% growth,” creating an impossible dilemma for companies trying to raise follow-on rounds ¹⁰.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 33 verified investments attributed to Lars Leckie personally (from his HWVP team page and the Aspenwood portfolio), his actual investment behavior shows:

Sector breakdown (33 verified investments): - Enterprise SaaS / applications: 12 of 33 (36%) — Aria Systems, Klue, Oomnitza, CloseFactor, StepFunction, Aspire, ScreenMeet, SmartAccess, MobileForce, DreamTeamOS, Blissfully, Hypatos - Infrastructure / cloud / virtualization: 7 of 33 (21%) — PLUMgrid, vKernel, Pancetera, TidalScale, Kloudfuse, Vendia, Baseten - Cybersecurity / data privacy: 5 of 33 (15%) — NeuVector, Airgap, Arkose Labs, DefectDojo, Ethyca - Developer tools / DevOps: 4 of 33 (12%) — Sonatype, Stackery, WunderGraph, HighFlame - Analytics / data: 3 of 33 (9%) — Amberdata, Clarify Health, Alpharank - Other (communications / events): 2 of 33 (6%) — Jamm, Hopin

Stage distribution: Predominantly early stage. Leckie typically leads or co-leads seed and Series A rounds, often as the first institutional investor. He has also made select growth-stage investments (Oomnitza at $20M growth round, Baseten at $300M Series E) ¹¹¹².

Check size: At HWVP/Aspenwood, initial checks range from $500K to $3M, with a sweet spot around $2M ¹³. The firm targets “reasonable ownership and a board seat” at entry ⁹.

Geographic focus: Primarily US-based companies, with some willingness to invest globally. The Aspenwood portfolio is concentrated in San Francisco and the Bay Area, with some companies in Vancouver (Klue), Austin, and New York ⁶.

Founder profile patterns: Leckie shows a preference for technical founders building B2B products with high gross margins. Multiple portfolio companies were founded by engineers (MuleSoft, PLUMgrid, NeuVector, Baseten). He values capital discipline, preferring startups that “can sustain operations with limited resources” to avoid premature scaling ⁹.

Exit patterns: The portfolio shows a notable rate of acquisitions by major technology companies: NeuVector (acquired by SUSE for $130M), Airgap (acquired by Zscaler), Stackery (acquired by AWS), Jamm (acquired by Hopin), Blissfully (acquired by Vendr), TidalScale (acquired by HPE), vKernel (acquired by Quest Software), Pancetera (acquired by Quantum), StepFunction (acquired by Gruve), and Vidoso (acquired by Webflow) ⁶¹⁴¹⁵.

Co-investor patterns: Frequent co-investors include C5 Capital (Oomnitza), Newlands (Kloudfuse), Blumberg Capital (Kloudfuse), IVP and CapitalG (Baseten), and Iolar Ventures (DefectDojo) ¹¹¹⁶¹⁷.

Notable gap between stated and actual thesis: While the firm claims exclusive enterprise software focus, some investments extend into adjacent areas: Amberdata (blockchain/Web3 data), Hopin (virtual events), Aspire (influencer marketing), and nfinite (e-commerce 3D visualization) ⁶. These represent a modest broadening beyond the pure enterprise infrastructure focus.

Portfolio

This table represents 40 investments attributed to Lars Leckie through his HWVP team page (6 investments) and the Aspenwood Ventures portfolio page (33 investments, with some overlap). Leckie was also involved in HWVP fund-level investments in MuleSoft, Five9, InsideSales, and other companies listed on the firm profile, though his specific role varied.

In Their Own Words

“We’re having a kick ass first quarter. Valuations will fall where they fall. But it is a very good time to be quietly investing in enterprise and SaaS infrastructure.” — Lars Leckie, StrictlyVC interview, April 2015 ³

“Small, focused funds do the best by their investors. $35 million to $50 million per partner is ideal.” — Lars Leckie, StrictlyVC interview, April 2015 ³

“HWVP was the lead investor in the company and put money behind a two-person company with an open-source project that was challenging a big, old, slow legacy category.” — Lars Leckie, on investing in MuleSoft, HWVP Success Stories, January 2018 ²²

“MuleSoft is consistently ranked as one of the best companies to work for in San Francisco, has driven the creation of a brand and platform that will endure.” — Lars Leckie, HWVP Success Stories, January 2018 ²²

“The betting on history would be it’ll grow the market, it’ll be fabulous.” — Lars Leckie, on AI’s impact on enterprise software, Next Unicorn Podcast, September 2024 ⁹

“Ethyca has raised the bar for the privacy sector, and has set a new bar for actually doing the management and deletion of data.” — Lars Leckie, Ethyca funding announcement, December 2024 ²¹

“AI is changing the way software is built and run, with the biggest shifts happening beneath the application layer.” — Lars Leckie, on Baseten’s Series E, LinkedIn post, January 2026 ¹²

What Founders Say

“A thousand thanks to you, Lars Leckie, for all your help and support throughout NeuVector’s journey. You challenged me to think outside the box, and were consistently upbeat and supportive, especially through the disruptive and uncertain time of the Pandemic. You always had my back!” — Stephanie Fohn, CEO, NeuVector, Aspenwood Ventures website ²³

“Steve, Lars and the Aspenwood team were extraordinary partners as we built out the business. Their deep expertise, network and founder centric approach was invaluable to me as a first time entrepreneur.” — Badri Rajasekar, Founder/CEO, Jamm, Aspenwood Ventures website ²³

“The AspenwoodVC Team brings a huge amount of SaaS experience to the table that helps Klue dominate our category.” — Jason Smith, Founder/CEO, Klue, Aspenwood Ventures website ²³

“Lars and the Aspenwood team have been amazing partners helping us build and scale our business.” — Shawn Douglass, Founder/CEO, Amberdata, Aspenwood Ventures website ²³

“Aspenwood works harder for the success of our business than any other firm I know.” — Tom Dibble, CEO, Aria Systems, Aspenwood Ventures website ²³

Note: These testimonials are sourced from the Aspenwood Ventures website and may reflect a curated selection. No independently sourced founder testimonials from third-party publications were found.

Connections

• Board member, Aria Systems — since September 2007 ¹⁹
• Board member, PLUMgrid — during investment period (company acquired by VMware) ¹
• Board member, SIIA (Software Information Industry Association) Piston ¹
• Founding charter member and former co-chair, C100 (Canadians in Silicon Valley) — an organization connecting Canadian entrepreneurs with Silicon Valley resources ¹⁸
• Advisor, VLAB — Stanford-affiliated technology networking and education organization ²⁴
• Stanford Directors’ Consortium — completed Stanford GSB’s corporate governance program ²⁵
• Co-investor with Steve Kishi (Aspenwood Ventures co-Managing Director) across all Aspenwood portfolio companies ⁶
• Frequent co-investor with C5 Capital (Oomnitza), Newlands (Kloudfuse), Blumberg Capital (Kloudfuse), Iolar Ventures (DefectDojo) ¹¹¹⁶¹⁷

Sources