Mike Dauber

Background

Mike Dauber is a General Partner at Amplify Partners, the early-stage venture firm he has co-led alongside founder Sunil Dhaliwal since joining in August 2014 ¹². The two previously worked together at Battery Ventures, where Dhaliwal was Dauber’s manager ³.

Dauber grew up outside Washington, D.C. and attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology ⁴. He earned a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania ¹⁵.

Dauber began his career in 2001 as a hardware engineer at Velio Communications, a semiconductor startup, where he spent approximately two years ¹⁵. He has said that he found it frustrating to spend so much time building products that ultimately proved to be wrong ⁵. He subsequently held product, sales, solutions engineering, and marketing roles at Altera and Xilinx over approximately five years, including serving as an account manager for Cisco ²⁵⁶.

In 2008, Dauber transitioned to venture capital at Battery Ventures, where he spent more than six years as a principal focusing on early-stage enterprise infrastructure and applications on the West Coast ²³. At Battery, he led investments in Duetto, RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce), Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK), Platfora (acquired by Workday), Continuuity, and Vera, and sat on the boards of Cask, Duetto, Interana, and Platfora ²³⁵. He was named to the Forbes Midas Brink List in 2014 as an up-and-coming venture investor ²³.

Dauber joined Amplify in 2014 to help Dhaliwal build the firm. He has described the decision as fulfilling a longstanding desire: “I’ve always wanted to go off and do my own thing, and you couple that with the idea that $1.5 trillion in market cap is shifting in the space where Amplify focuses” ³. At the time he joined, Amplify had raised nearly $50 million for its debut fund with approximately half already committed ³. He authors an annual AI Engineering Report as part of his thought leadership at the firm ¹⁷.

Stated Thesis

Dauber publicly describes his focus as backing “technical entrepreneurs who are solving technical problems in a domain in which they are deeply immersed” ⁵. He has stated that he enjoys working with founders who are “deeply steeped in their domain, feel like they’ve got something to prove and are borderline obsessed with their idea,” noting that this passion “touches all the key aspects of company formation: recruiting, selling, and fundraising” ¹.

On his investing philosophy, Dauber has said: “Early stage investing is deeply personal. It’s not about spreadsheets and customer references” ¹. He has also emphasized lessons from his engineering background: “The core lesson I learned as an engineer — everything is about tradeoffs. You get nothing for free” ¹.

In a June 2025 post on X, Dauber described his mission at Amplify: “When I joined @dhaliwas on this journey 11 years ago it was to build the haven for technical founders. Nothing has changed except we have far more resources than I ever imagined to help the people we’re built to serve” ⁸.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 22 verified investments personally attributed to Dauber across his Amplify Partners tenure (from his Amplify bio, Stanford NVCA speaker profile, Evalyze, and Crunchbase cross-references), the following patterns emerge. Note: as co-leader of Amplify, Dauber is involved in a broader set of the firm’s 162 total investments, but these 22 are specifically attributed to him as deal lead or active board participant.

Sector breakdown (22 verified investments): - Developer tools and infrastructure: 8 of 22 (36%) — Gremlin, Abstract, Temporal, Archera, Scribe, Maze, OctoML, Primer - Cybersecurity and supply chain security: 4 of 22 (18%) — StackRox, LightCyber, Chainguard, Integris Software - AI/ML infrastructure and applications: 4 of 22 (18%) — OctoML, Lamini, SiMa.ai, Intellimize - Enterprise software: 3 of 22 (14%) — Intellimize, Archera, Scribe - Hardware/semiconductors: 2 of 22 (9%) — SiMa.ai, Sonera Magnetics - Other: 1 of 22 (5%) — Buddybuild (mobile developer tools, acquired by Apple)

Note: some companies span multiple categories; primary category used above.

Stage distribution: Predominantly seed-stage investments, consistent with Amplify’s first-check focus. Follow-on participation through Series B is documented for several companies (Archera Series B, Scribe Series B, Intellimize Series B, SiMa.ai Series B) ⁹.

Geographic concentration: Dauber’s portfolio is heavily concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, consistent with Amplify’s Menlo Park and San Francisco offices ⁴.

Check size: $500K to $5M at initial check, with a typical seed investment around $2.75M ⁴⁷.

Founder profile patterns: Dauber has a strong stated and demonstrated preference for deeply technical founders with domain expertise. Multiple portfolio founders came from engineering backgrounds at major infrastructure companies (e.g., Temporal founders from Uber’s Cadence team, Chainguard founders from Google’s container security work).

Co-investor patterns: Based on downstream funding rounds of Dauber’s portfolio companies, frequent co-investors include Sequoia Capital (StackRox Series A, Temporal Series A), Redpoint Ventures (StackRox Series B), Dell Technologies Capital (SiMa.ai Series A), and Andreessen Horowitz (Temporal Series B) ¹⁰¹¹¹².

Exit patterns: Multiple successful exits including StackRox (acquired by Red Hat, ~$100M, 2021), Buddybuild (acquired by Apple), LightCyber (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), CMD/Cmd (acquired by Elastic), Determined AI (acquired by HPE), and Platfora (acquired by Workday) from his Battery days ¹¹⁰. RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce) and Splunk (IPO) are notable Battery-era outcomes ²³.

Notable gaps vs. stated thesis: Dauber’s stated focus on “technical founders solving technical problems” is broadly consistent with his actual portfolio, which is almost entirely B2B infrastructure and developer-facing companies. There is limited consumer exposure and no fintech, which is consistent with Amplify’s enterprise-only positioning.

Portfolio

At Amplify Partners (2014-present)

At Battery Ventures (2008-2014)

In Their Own Words

“Early stage investing is deeply personal. It’s not about spreadsheets and customer references.” — Mike Dauber, Amplify Partners website ¹

“The core lesson I learned as an engineer — everything is about tradeoffs. You get nothing for free.” — Mike Dauber, Amplify Partners website ¹

“I’ve always wanted to go off and do my own thing, and you couple that with the idea that $1.5 trillion in market cap is shifting in the space where Amplify focuses.” — Mike Dauber, Fortune, August 2014 ³

“When I joined @dhaliwas on this journey 11 years ago it was to build the haven for technical founders. Nothing has changed except we have far more resources than I ever imagined to help the people we’re built to serve.” — Mike Dauber, X/Twitter, June 2025 ⁸

What Founders Say

“One of the many great privileges of building Scribe has been getting to do it with Mike. Outside my team, Mike is my first call when working through a difficult problem and my go-to whether it’s advice, an intro, or even tough love.” — Jennifer Smith, Founder and CEO of Scribe, Amplify Partners website ¹¹⁵

“Very few VCs have the intellectual capacity, functional experience, and innate desire to partner with founders as Mike does.” — Krishna Rangasayee, Founder and CEO of SiMa.ai, Amplify Partners website ¹

“Mike cared deeply about my journey as an entrepreneur. He was more than just an investor — he was a partner in the business.” — Dennis Pilarinos, Founder and CEO of Buddybuild, Amplify Partners website ¹

“Amplify was central to the genesis of Temporal, beyond just being our first investor. Maxim and I met Lenny, Mike, and the Amplify team when we were working on Cadence at Uber, and conversations with them helped us gain the confidence to do our own thing. Without Amplify, there would be no Temporal.” — Samar Abbas, Co-founder and CEO of Temporal, Amplify Partners website ¹⁵

“Sunil and Mike are great complements to each other and I look forward to working with them.” — Jonathan Gray, CEO of Continuuity, GlobeNewswire press release, August 2014 ²

Note: all founder testimonials above are sourced from the Amplify Partners website or official press releases. No independently sourced founder testimonials from external publications were located during research.

Connections

• Board member, SiMa.ai — AI chip company; board alongside Krishna Rangasayee (Founder/CEO) ¹³¹²
• Board member, Scribe — workflow documentation platform ⁷
• Board member, OctoML — ML optimization platform ⁷
• Board member, Intellimize — website personalization (acquired by Webflow) ⁷
• Board observer, StackRox — Kubernetes security (acquired by Red Hat, 2021); alongside Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures ¹¹⁰
• Former board member, Cask Data (at Battery Ventures) — acquired by Google ⁵
• Former board member, Duetto (at Battery Ventures) ⁵
• Former board member, Interana (at Battery Ventures) ⁵
• Former board member, Platfora (at Battery Ventures) — acquired by Workday ⁵
• Former Principal, Battery Ventures (2008-2014) — worked alongside Sunil Dhaliwal; other Battery alumni include Todd Dagres (Spark Capital), Satya Patel (Homebrew), and Ravi Mohan (Shasta Ventures) ³⁵
• Forbes Midas Brink List (2014) — recognized as up-and-coming venture investor ²³
• Speaker, Stanford/NVCA Venture Capital Symposium (2020) ⁵
• Podcast appearances: SaaStr Podcast #139 (2017) ¹⁶, Origins podcast with Notation Capital (August 2025) ¹⁷

Sources