Cindy Padnos

Investor

Vivant Corporation, Illuminate Ventures

BrightEdge Technologies, CalmSea, Inc., RedAril, Xactly Corporation, ClairMail, Optena, Reply, WildPockets, Digital Chocolate, Lasso Logic

Scopus Technology, Acumen International, Ingres, Vivant, IDE

It's what I am best at....so even as an investor I chose to do something unique and entrepreneurial.

BrightEdge, CalmSea, Xactly, Red Aril, Digital Fuel

Most frustrating - how long it sometimes takes to know if what you are doing will be successful or not.

Most rewarding - having someone tell you about a cool company or product they recently saw .....and it's one you helped build or invested in.

Thinking that great technology by itself wins.

1. Be willing to look reality in the eye and then decide, consciously, when to ignore it.
2. Focus, focus, focus
3. Be passionate about customer/user/ feedback and satisfaction.

Cindy Padnos – Founding Managing Director

Cindy Padnos is the founding managing director of Illuminate Ventures (www.illuminate.com), a high-tech focused venture capital firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Ms. Padnos has been an active member of the venture capital community since 2002.  Prior to founding Illuminate, she was a director of Outlook Ventures where she was one of three investment professionals responsible for committing the firm’s $140 million fund.  During her tenure, Ms. Padnos sourced more than half of the firm’s new investments including companies in the IT infrastructure, software/SaaS, consumer Internet and mobile application spaces and built a track record of performance. 

Ms. Padnos has developed a unique and widely recognized set of skills in the B2B cloud computing space as a result of her prior experience as an operator and investor. As a serial entrepreneur, Ms. Padnos helped deliver successful outcomes for several venture-backed start-ups and has participated in raising more than $100 million in venture financing for early stage high-tech companies. She was founder and CEO of Vivant, (Acq. EVLV) one of the earliest on-demand/SaaS companies, served as president & CEO for Acumen (Pvt. M&A) transitioning the company to web-based delivery and vice president of marketing at Scopus Technology (IPO). She also held senior management positions at IDE, Ingres and at AT&T.  Early on Ms. Padnos developed her market assessment skills and love of innovation in the high-tech sector as a consultant in the information technology practices of Arthur D. Little and Booz, Allen.

Ms. Padnos received her MSIA/MBA, with honors, from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and her AB, magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan where she gave the commencement address to the College of Engineering in 2011. She currently serves as an advisor to Astia, the Tepper School of Business, Project Olympus and to Women 2.0.  She is a board member for privately held companies BrightEdge, CalmSea, LPI&M, Wild Pockets and Xactly. Cindy was honored by being named one of the Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company in 2010 and Most Influential Women in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times in 2011.