Steve Kishi

Background

Steve Kishi 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 co-leads the firm alongside fellow Managing Director Lars Leckie ²³.

Kishi first joined HWVP in 1994 ¹⁴. Unlike many venture capitalists who remain solely on the investing side, Kishi spent significant portions of his career in operating roles at HWVP portfolio companies, accumulating over 20 years of combined venture capital and operating experience ¹⁴.

Kishi holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a member of the Sigma Gamma Tau Engineering Honor Society and participated in crew and sailing ¹⁵. He also holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, with studies at London Business School (1993-1995) ⁴⁵.

Before entering venture capital, Kishi worked as an engineer at McDonnell Douglas ⁶. His operating career within HWVP’s portfolio included several notable roles:

• At Extensity (HWVP portfolio company that went public), he served as Senior Director of Professional Services and Senior Marketing Manager from approximately 1997 to 2001, leading marketing and services teams and overseeing international implementations across Europe, Asia, and North America ¹⁴.
• At Akimbi Systems (acquired by VMware), he served as VP of Product Management, Services, and Support ¹.
• At VMware, following the Akimbi acquisition, he ran product management for Lab Manager, vCloud Director, and Hybrid Cloud applications ¹⁷.
• At Altiscale (acquired by SAP for approximately $125 million), he served as VP of Product Management ¹⁸.

In July 2021, Kishi and Leckie led the transition from HWVP to Aspenwood Ventures, closing a $70 million fund ³⁹. He has directly led over 50 minority and majority private investments and acquisitions, co-led over 90 more, and held board and advisory board positions in over 60 public and private companies ⁶.

Stated Thesis

Kishi has characterized the firm’s focus as “early-stage investments in enterprise software applications and infrastructure” leveraging deep knowledge of “SaaS and virtualization technologies” ¹.

At Aspenwood Ventures, the firm positions itself as “the first institutional capital partner to technically sophisticated founding teams building infrastructure-level solutions” in areas including SaaS, AI, blockchain, data privacy, and network security ⁶¹⁰.

On Signal NFX, Kishi’s investment profile states: “HWVP invests in early stage software companies. Our stage sweet-spot is ‘first institutional investor’, and this is often pre-revenue” and explicitly notes: “HWVP does not invest in consumer software. And it’s usually too late to approach us if you already have venture investors” ¹¹.

On the role of AI in enterprise software, Kishi has stated: “What AI foundation models can do right now is laps ahead of what software products can deliver, which is itself far ahead of what most enterprises are ready to implement” ⁵. He has argued that AI will benefit enterprise software customers by “democratizing access so that more users can make use of deep business insights built from massive data sets” and by “enabling customers to make real-time operating decisions at scale, with greater speed, precision and less labor input” ⁵.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 18 verified investments directly attributed to Steve Kishi across his HWVP and Aspenwood tenures, his actual investment behavior shows a consistent enterprise infrastructure focus with a strong tilt toward virtualization and security:

Sector breakdown (18 verified investments): - Infrastructure / virtualization / cloud: 6 of 18 (33%) — Akimbi Systems, Wavemaker, Scalent, Jamm, Stackery, WunderGraph - Cybersecurity / identity / privacy: 4 of 18 (22%) — Bridgestream, Oomnitza, DefectDojo, Ethyca - Enterprise applications / SaaS: 4 of 18 (22%) — Five9, Extensity, Knowmadic, Sapias - Storage / disaster recovery: 3 of 18 (17%) — Jareva, Yosemite Technologies, InMage - Developer tools / APIs: 1 of 18 (6%) — WunderGraph

Note: Kishi’s portfolio overlaps significantly with the broader HWVP/Aspenwood portfolio managed jointly with Lars Leckie. The 33 Aspenwood portfolio companies are co-managed by both partners. The 18 investments above are those specifically attributed to Kishi’s personal involvement on the HWVP team page and confirmed announcements.

Stage distribution: Consistently early stage, frequently as first institutional investor. Kishi’s Signal NFX profile explicitly identifies the sweet spot as “first institutional investor” and “often pre-revenue” ¹¹. Check sizes range from $2M to $5M at Aspenwood ¹⁰.

Founder profile patterns: Kishi’s operating background in product management gives him an unusual ability to evaluate technical products deeply. His portfolio shows a preference for infrastructure-layer companies solving complex enterprise problems (virtualization, storage, security, API management).

Exit patterns: Kishi’s portfolio shows a remarkably high acquisition rate by major technology companies. Of the 18 attributed investments: Jareva (acquired by Veritas), Knowmadic (acquired by Intellicap), Yosemite Technologies (acquired by Barracuda Networks), Scalent (acquired by Dell), InMage (acquired by Microsoft), Bridgestream (acquired by Oracle), Wavemaker (acquired by VMware), Akimbi Systems (acquired by VMware), Jamm (acquired by Hopin), and Stackery (acquired by AWS) — 10 of 18 (56%) resulted in acquisitions ¹. Five9 went public (NASDAQ: FIVN) and Extensity also IPO’d ¹.

Co-investor patterns: Kishi co-leads all Aspenwood investments with Lars Leckie ². Notable co-investors on Kishi-attributed deals include Voyager Capital and Founders’ Co-op (Stackery), Karma Ventures and eBay Ventures (WunderGraph), and C5 Capital (Oomnitza) ¹²¹³¹⁴.

Notable pattern — virtualization expertise: Multiple investments in the virtualization space (Akimbi Systems, Wavemaker, both acquired by VMware) align directly with Kishi’s operating experience running product management at VMware for Lab Manager and vCloud Director ¹⁷. This suggests a deep domain thesis around infrastructure virtualization and cloud management that informed both his operating and investing careers.

Portfolio

This table represents 17 investments directly attributed to Steve Kishi through his HWVP team page (12 investments) and confirmed Aspenwood deal announcements (5 additional). Kishi is also involved in the broader Aspenwood portfolio of 33 companies co-managed with Lars Leckie, including Klue, Amberdata, Clarify, NeuVector, Airgap, Kloudfuse, HighFlame, and others listed on the Aspenwood portfolio page ¹⁰.

In Their Own Words

“Stackery provides the most sophisticated software we’ve seen in the ‘serverless’ space. Stackery provides everything a development and operations team needs to reliably deploy serverless applications in production using appropriate governance and standardization. Though just over a year old, Stackery is clearly the leader in the enterprise serverless market.” — Steve Kishi, Managing Director, HWVP, Stackery funding announcement, April 2018 ¹²

“As investors, we believe that WunderGraph is the leader of a fundamental change in the API space. WunderGraph’s new Cloud offering further blurs the line between API gateway and backend, representing a paradigm shift from ops-driven to infraless API deployments.” — Steve Kishi, Managing Director, Aspenwood Ventures, WunderGraph seed announcement, April 2023 ¹³

“We backed MuleSoft back in 2006 to build the leading platform for enterprise adoption of APIs. WunderGraph is the next MuleSoft.” — Steve Kishi, LinkedIn post ⁵

“With Oomnitza’s Enterprise Technology Management solution, organizations finally have the foundation for effective cybersecurity.” — Steve Kishi, Managing Director, Aspenwood Ventures, Oomnitza funding announcement, August 2021 ¹⁴

“What AI foundation models can do right now is laps ahead of what software products can deliver, which is itself far ahead of what most enterprises are ready to implement.” — Steve Kishi, LinkedIn post ⁵

What Founders Say

“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 ²

“Steve and Lars were instrumental in being a sounding board and supporting the Jamm team. As a first time CEO, their engaged yet soft touch approach was incredibly helpful.” — Badri Rajasekar, Founder/CEO, Jamm, Aspenwood Ventures team page ³

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 specifically mentioning Steve Kishi by name. Additional founder testimonials on the Aspenwood website reference “the Aspenwood team” or Lars Leckie specifically rather than Kishi individually.

Connections

• Board and advisory positions in 60+ companies — across public companies, private companies, non-profit institutions, and other venture funds ⁶
• Co-Managing Director with Lars Leckie at Aspenwood Ventures, co-leading all firm investments ²³
• Former VP Product Management, VMware — ran product management for Lab Manager, vCloud Director, and Hybrid Cloud applications following the Akimbi acquisition ¹⁷
• Former VP Product Management, Altiscale — prior to SAP’s acquisition of the company for approximately $125 million ¹⁸
• Former Senior Director, Extensity — through IPO period (~1997-2001) ¹⁴
• Co-investor with Voyager Capital, Pipeline Capital Partners, Founders’ Co-op (Stackery) ¹²
• Co-investor with C5 Capital, Gula Tech Adventures (Oomnitza) ¹⁴
• Co-investor with Karma Ventures, eBay Ventures (WunderGraph) ¹³
• Co-investor with Iolar Ventures (DefectDojo) ¹⁸
• Co-investor with AVP (Ethyca) ¹⁹
• Speaker at JAOO 2007 conference (Aarhus, Denmark) ²⁰
• Participant in TiEcon 2021 VC Connect ²¹

Sources