Pathlight VC

Pathlight Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City, established in 2021. The firm strategically invests in a select number of companies annually, focusing on the earliest stages of company building, from inception through Series A. Their investment thesis centers on opinionated, outlier founders with deep industry experience in markets undergoing significant transformation. Pathlight Ventures takes a thematic, market, and customer-driven approach, emphasizing the creation of impactful solutions for end-users.

The firm's investment focus spans several key sectors, including vertical artificial intelligence, healthcare, fintech and payments, infrastructure, security, enterprise software, app software, vertical software, and the public sector. Pathlight Ventures is proudly backed by a diverse group of limited partners, including non-profit endowments, hospitals, and over 50 public and private unicorn founders and operators from prominent companies such as Headway, Nubank, Notion, Coinbase, and Flatiron Health.

Pathlight Ventures' portfolio includes investments in companies like Artie, Oasys, Volca, Slice, Apollo, Chronosphere, Clara, iVerify, EvenUp, Crossmint, Truewind, and Kard. The firm's co-founders, Mahdi Raza and Charley Ma, bring extensive operational and investment experience, having played pivotal roles in scaling multiple companies from early stages to over $100 million in revenue at organizations such as Plaid, Robinhood, Ramp, and Alloy. Kasra Khadem serves as an Investor, contributing to the firm's investment activities across software, fintech, and healthcare.

Mahdi Raza, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, is particularly interested in the convergence of software, payments, and AI to revolutionize traditional industries. His background includes leading growth and payments at Robinhood and Stytch, and prior roles in M&A at Evercore and fintech/software investing at GIC. Charley Ma, also a Co-Founder and Managing Partner, has a strong track record in scaling enterprise software startups, having led go-to-market teams from $0 to $200 million as the first revenue hire for companies like Plaid, Ramp, and Alloy. His early career involved payments strategy and blockchain at JP Morgan.