Carolina Huaranca

Carolina Huaranca Mendoza is a General Partner at First Close Partners and a Managing Partner at 1504 Ventures. She began her investing career as a Principal at Kapor Capital, a fund which invested in companies such as Uber, Twilio, Promise, and CareerKarma. In addition to investing in startups she also designed Kapor’s first formal LP strategy into diverse fund managers.

Upon graduating Cornell University, she worked in M&A investment banking at two bulge bracket banks. But, her passion for tech entrepreneurship led to a Sales & Marketing Manager role at SchoolNet which sold to Pearson for $230.0M. She would go on to launch her own startup, Spriggle, a marketplace for STEM education products. Carolina channeled her passion for STEM to serve as the Founding Director of the Clubs Division of Girls Who Code launching programs to teach over 2,000 girls computer science. She has been featured in CNN Money, SF Chronicle, and USA Today.