Judy Robinett

I did not begin in venture capital. I ran companies first, including a publicly traded one, Medical Discoveries, as its CEO, and I held management roles at Fortune 500 companies before I truly understood how capital moves. What I learned is that money flows through relationships, and that the door to almost any room can be opened by the right person.

So I built the network on purpose. I served as a managing director of Golden Seeds, one of the largest and most active angel groups in the country, joined the faculty of Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Small Businesses program, and I have sat on the advisory boards of venture firms including Illuminate Ventures and Pereg Ventures, and of Springboard Enterprises, which was founded to get women founders through doors that were long closed to them.

I wrote two books to give founders the playbook I wish I had had. How to Be a Power Connector, which Inc. named the number-one business book of 2014, lays out my 5+50+150 rule for building a network that compounds. Crack the Funding Code teaches founders how investors actually think and what they need to hear. I have shared these ideas with audiences from NASA to MIT to TEDx.

At Whipsmart I do for space and deep-tech founders what I have done my entire career: open the right doors and put the right people in the room. The hardest companies to build are the ones that demand real capital, real time, and real conviction, and those founders need more than a check. They need someone who has spent decades earning trust on both sides of the table. That is the seat I am proud to fill.