[Updated 10:50 am. See below] There aren’t many prominent female VCs based in Boston. Now there are even fewer.
Dayna Grayson, a former principal at North Bridge Venture Partners, has left the firm and joined New Enterprise Associates (NEA) as a partner. She will be based in the Washington, DC, area as part of NEA’s East Coast technology team, making investments in enterprise and consumer Internet startups.
Grayson is known for her digital-media investments in the Boston and New York areas. Her North Bridge portfolio included virtual-goods firm Viximo (which merged with Tapjoy this year) and social TV startup Philo Media (bought by LocalResponse). She spoke with Xconomy back in January about the New York tech scene.
“I’ve spent several years circling Boston and traveling the well-worn path from Boston to NYC and Boston to the West Coast,” Grayson writes on NEA’s blog. “I’m excited to expand that route to meet new entrepreneurs.”
It sounds like she won’t be a stranger to Boston, though. Grayson adds that her travel schedule “will continue to involve frequent trips to NYC and Boston as well as many new places.”
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Reached by phone this morning, Grayson says she is physically moving to the DC area in the next couple of weeks. She no longer has board commitments from North Bridge, and she hasn’t yet inherited any board duties at NEA, so she’s making a fresh start, focusing on seed and early-stage deals across different geographies, with a close eye on the East Coast.
On moving on from North Bridge, where she was since 2006: “I have a huge amount of respect for the investors there,” she says, mentioning Ed Anderson in particular. “NEA presented a great opportunity, and it was a great fit for what I wanted to do with my career.” The move has “brought a fresh new lens” to her approach, she says.
As for particular sectors she finds interesting, Grayson points to e-commerce, marketplaces, education, mobile ad-tech, and the “consumerization of enterprise.”
Her networks are strongest in Boston and New York, so that’s probably where she’ll continue to look for entrepreneurs to work with. Plus she’s an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School this year, so that will bring her to town a couple times a month. “I still plan to spend a ton of time in Boston,” she says. “I’m looking forward to keeping in touch with all the people there.”
