Trae Vassallo

Athlete, Business adviser, Designer, Engineer, Inventor, Investor, Parent, Startup, Technologist, World traveler

Trae Vassallo is in WW Operations at Apple. She was previously Co-Founder and Managing Director of Defy, an early stage venture capital firm. She is an engineer, an entrepreneur, an investor, and an operator, and her passion is collaborating with amazing teams. A "design thinker" and engineer at heart, Trae thrives at the intersection of great products and big markets. Prior to Defy, Trae was a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Over her investing career, Trae invested in number of leading companies including Verse, Elevate Security, eero, Molekule, Nest Labs, Dropcam, Aggregate Knowledge and Opower. Trae has public company experience having been on the board of directors at Telstra, an international telecommunications company. Before joining KPCB, Trae was a Co-Founder of Good Technology, a KPCB portfolio company that provides end-to-end wireless email services to the enterprise. Trae began her career at IDEO, where she developed ground-breaking products for companies including Palm and Dell. Trae holds 13 patents across a broad array of technologies and disciplines. Trae strives to empower women in technology. She helped co-found and run Equity Summit, an annual event that brings $2T of AUM together for relationship building and authentic conversation between leading LPs and women GPs. In 2015, Trae co-authored the study "Elephant in the Valley" to help highlight the underlying data around the experiences of women in technology. Trae earned a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in mechanical engineering with honors from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Trae participated on the Trust of the Stanford Business School and as an advisor to the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford. In addition to collaborating with amazing teams, Trae is passionate about adventuring with her husband, Steve, and three children.

Working with high performance teams, building breakthrough businesses, technology innovation, product development, traveling, empowering women in science and technology, & parenting

entrepreneurship, green technologies, innovation, Product Design & Development, technology, Venture Capital

My first TED was in 2003 while working for John Doerr at KPCB. He brought his daughters with him and I promised myself that one day, I'd do that. Thrilled to have my college daughter with me this year as we attend our first mother daughter TED together. This will be my 11th TED.

Walking on my hands