Every venture investor tells their portfolio companies that they’re more than just a check. They help with introductions, they help with recruiting, and they help with going public. Some have even been operators themselves and encountered the same problems as their startup founders. But how many full-time VCs can boast that they helped build the biggest tech companies in the world?
There’s Marc Andreessen, of course, and Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla. David Fischer, a partner at 01 Advisors, may not yet have the same name recognition, though he served as a vice president of sales at Google and then chief revenue officer at Facebook as both companies burst out of the stratosphere. And for founders hoping to scale their companies from zero to one in this era of hyper-speed, Fischer’s background may make him as valuable as the giants of Sand Hill Road.
I met with Fischer this spring in 01A’s New York office, which is in the same Lower Manhattan building that houses Union Square Ventures and Inspired Capital. Even before Fischer joined the VC ranks during the pandemic, he took a circuitous route into tech. He worked briefly as a journalist before a stint at the Treasury Department for Larry Summers, which is where he met his future boss at Google and Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg. (Fischer’s father, the famed economist and central banker Stanley Fischer, recently passed away.)
