Zach Perret

Co-Founder & Managing Director at Mischief

Reviewed Updated Jun 3, 2026

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Co-founder & MD of Mischief Ventures, pre-seed/seed specialist ($100K-$5M checks). Invests in fintech, healthcare, enterprise software, climate, developer tools, crypto. San Francisco based. Portfolio focused on early-stage founders with mission-driven conviction. Operates high-velocity pre-seed program.

Location San Francisco, CA

Check Size $100K-$5M

Last Verified Investment Tivara (Seed) — Jan 12, 2026

Social @zachperret LinkedIn

Stage Focus

pre-seed seed series-a

Sector Focus

fintech healthcare enterprise climate developer-tools crypto

Background

Zach Perret (full name Zachary Perret) grew up in Clemmons, a small town in North Carolina ¹. He attended Duke University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Biology ¹ ². After graduating, he worked as an Associate at Bain & Company from 2010 to 2012, where he met his future Plaid co-founder William Hockey ² ³.

In 2012, Perret co-founded Plaid with Hockey ². Plaid connects fintech applications with consumers’ bank accounts, providing financial data infrastructure used by companies including Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase ¹. Under Perret’s leadership as CEO, Plaid has raised over $734 million from investors including NEA, Spark Capital, GV, Coatue, and Andreessen Horowitz ⁴. In January 2020, Visa announced a $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid, but the deal was abandoned in January 2021 after a DOJ antitrust lawsuit ⁵. Plaid was valued at $13.4 billion in a 2021 funding round ⁵.

Perret began angel investing around 2016, initially viewing it as a way to stay connected with early-stage markets while running Plaid ⁶. Finding individual angel investing time-consuming, he partnered with Lauren Farleigh, founder of the Gen Z shopping app Dote, to launch Mischief in 2021 ³ ⁷. Mischief 1, L.P. filed a Form D with the SEC on May 14, 2021, targeting $30 million ³. The firm raised an $80 million Fund II in 2024 ⁸. Perret serves as Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mischief while continuing as CEO of Plaid, focusing on sourcing and situations where his operational experience is relevant ⁷.

Perret was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and appeared on the Forbes 2022 Billionaires List ¹.

Stated Thesis

Mischief describes itself as “a venture firm based in San Francisco, investing $1-5M in early stage software companies” ⁹. The firm’s website states the partners are “a collection of operators whose diverse experiences enable us to empathize with and collaborate on the challenges early-stage founders face” ⁹.

Perret’s personal website describes his investing focus areas as “healthcare, but also energy, climate, and enterprise software” ⁴. The firm publicly positions itself as generalist and founder-driven rather than thesis-driven ⁷.

The Mischief team emphasizes that they have “successfully built companies in many different industries” and bring experience raising “$1B+ in venture capital, hiring 1000+ executives, and generating over $1B in revenue” ⁹. The firm states it invests across fintech, infrastructure and security, healthcare, climate, crypto, and SaaS ⁹.

Perret has stated that Mischief’s approach is “hyper people-driven” — they “want to identify the best people that we know and follow them around when they’re ready to start a company” rather than doing outbound sourcing ⁷.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 14 verified investments attributed to Zach Perret personally (angel) and Mischief (fund), compiled from Tracxn, press releases, and TechCrunch articles. Tracxn reports 12 personal angel investments; Crunchbase reports up to 34 total investments ¹⁰ ¹¹. This analysis covers approximately 41% of the Crunchbase-reported total.

Sector distribution (14 verified investments): - Fintech / financial infrastructure: 6 of 14 (43%) — SentiLink, Metronome, Fragment, Comulate, CoinTracker, Cardless - Healthcare: 3 of 14 (21%) — NexHealth, Tivara, Flychain - Developer tools / enterprise software: 2 of 14 (14%) — Hamming AI, iVerify - Consumer / gaming: 2 of 14 (14%) — Lowkey, Cohere.io - Climate / energy: 1 of 14 (7%) — Light Energy

Note: CoinTracker spans fintech and crypto; counted once under fintech for the primary total.

Stage distribution (14 verified investments): - Seed: 8 of 14 (57%) — Fragment, Hamming AI, Tivara, CoinTracker, Lowkey, Cohere.io, Light Energy, Flychain - Series A: 3 of 14 (21%) — SentiLink, iVerify, Metronome - Series B: 2 of 14 (14%) — Comulate, NexHealth - Growth: 1 of 14 (7%) — Cardless

The strong concentration at seed stage (57%) is consistent with Mischief’s stated focus on first checks.

Check size: NFX Signal reports a range of $100K to $10M with a sweet spot of $1M ¹². Mischief’s stated range is $1-5M for fund investments ⁹; earlier angel investments were likely smaller.

Geographic concentration: Portfolio is heavily concentrated in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Fragment (Seattle) is a notable exception.

Founder profile patterns: Perret invests in technical founders building infrastructure and developer-facing products. Several portfolio companies (Fragment, Metronome, SentiLink) build backend financial infrastructure — reflecting Perret’s deep expertise from building Plaid.

Co-investor patterns: Andreessen Horowitz appears across multiple investments (SentiLink, Lowkey, Metronome). Other frequent co-investors include BoxGroup, Y Combinator, and Day One Ventures.

Notable alignment between stated and inferred thesis: Perret claims to focus on healthcare, climate, and enterprise software, and the portfolio does show meaningful healthcare exposure (21%). However, the strongest signal is fintech and financial infrastructure (43%), which he does not specifically call out — likely because it is so closely tied to his Plaid identity that it goes without saying.

Notable gap: Despite Mischief listing crypto/web3 as a focus area on its website, only 1 of 14 verified personal investments (CoinTracker) is crypto-focused. The fund-level portfolio (not all attributable to Perret individually) may show more crypto exposure.

Portfolio

This table includes 14 verified investments. Crunchbase reports up to 34 total investments ¹¹; this represents approximately 41% of the reported total. Prior versions included Warp and Faire, which subsequent verification could not confirm as Perret-attributed investments — Warp’s funding article ²⁵ names other angels but not Perret, and the Axios profile ³ attributes Faire to Lauren Farleigh’s personal angel portfolio, not Perret’s.

Company	Stage	Year	Sector	Status	Source
Comulate	Series B	2025	Insurance / fintech	Active	¹³
Tivara	Seed	2026-01-12	Healthcare AI	Active	¹⁴²⁸
Fragment	Seed	2024	Fintech infrastructure	Active	¹⁵
Hamming AI	Seed	2024-12-18	AI / developer tools	Active	¹⁶
iVerify	Series A	2024-06-26	Cybersecurity	Active	¹⁷
Cardless	Growth	2024-11-26	Fintech	Active	¹⁸
NexHealth	Series B	2021	Healthcare	Active	¹⁹
Metronome	Series A	2022	Enterprise software	Active	²⁰
CoinTracker	Seed	2018	Crypto / fintech	Active	²¹
Lowkey	Series A	2021	Gaming / consumer	Acquired	²²
Cohere.io	Seed	2021-03-17	Customer support AI	Acquired	²⁷
SentiLink	Series A	2019	Fintech / fraud detection	Active	²⁴
Flychain	Seed	2023-04	Healthcare fintech	Active	⁸²⁹
Light Energy	Seed	~2024	Climate / energy	Active	⁸

Years marked with ~ are estimates based on company founding year or round timing where exact investment date is not confirmed.

In Their Own Words

On Mischief’s investing approach: Perret has described the firm’s sourcing as “hyper people-driven” — “We want to identify the best people that we know and follow them around when they’re ready to start a company” ⁷.

On the value of investor support: “It takes sometimes just one call at a critical inflection point with someone that’s been there before to meaningfully change the trajectory of the company” ⁷.

On his personal mission as an investor, Perret’s website states he spends time “doing my best to invest in and be helpful to all the best founders I meet” ⁴.

On why he started angel investing: Perret initially viewed angel investing as a distraction while running Plaid, but starting in 2016 he engaged in it to “reconnect with early-stage markets and maintain freshness.” Finding it time-consuming as an individual, he partnered with Lauren Farleigh to create Mischief ⁶.

On building companies: “I think there are increasing returns to strategy, there are increasing returns to thoughtful decisions, but there’s a decreasing return on just pure volume of work” ⁵.

On the VC model: Perret has observed that “venture capital has transitioned from a boutique industry to a commoditized asset class” and that most Silicon Valley beliefs are “narrowly applicable” ⁶.

On investor behavior: “Investors first and foremost should do no harm” ²⁶.

On fintech: “The core thesis was that banking and financial services broadly was built for a world that hadn’t envisioned the Internet” ⁵.

On founder mode: Perret has warned that Paul Graham’s “Founder Mode” blog post is “one of the most misused” posts, potentially causing “some of the worst behaviors in startups” ⁶.

On OKRs: Perret has argued that OKRs, “originally designed for manufacturing,” do not suit software companies, and that setting revenue metrics before product-market fit is particularly problematic ⁶.

On fundraising: Perret advocates raising funds “infrequently,” viewing constant fundraising as wasteful ⁶.

On hiring: “Is this person going to come in and be able to truly increase the quality of the team or drive a meaningful piece of work forward?” ²⁶.

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found specifically about Zach Perret as an investor. Dedicated searches across Twitter, podcast transcripts, and press coverage did not surface founder quotes describing their experience working with Perret or Mischief as investors.

Lauren Farleigh, Perret’s Mischief co-founder, has spoken publicly about portfolio companies but these are firm communications rather than independent founder testimonials.