This month, we were thrilled to welcome Victoria Leon to our team as our new Vice President. Victoria will join our investment team to work with the best entrepreneurs in the Midwest and Toronto.
Victoria joins us with an entrepreneurial background, having built multiple startups including coding bootcamp Codesmith and co-founding adtech company Prizeout. She interned with HPVP during her MBA program and we’re thrilled to have her join our investing team full time.
She holds a Masters in Business Administration from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering with a concentration in Biomolecular Engineering from UCLA.
We sat down with Victoria to discuss her background, her experience as a founder and what excites her about this new role with HPVP.
What drew you to venture capital and working with startups?
Looking back on my past experiences, it became clear to me that I love the early stage startup ecosystem so I wanted to find a way to be a startup multiplier. Venture capital provides me with the opportunity to work with multiple companies simultaneously. I see VC as a way to be a true partner, supporting other founders as they build great companies and strong teams that can improve their communities and lives of those around them.
Tell us a little more about your company and how you came to be a founder.
What initially drew me to becoming a founder was the opportunity to build what I wanted to see. If you see a problem you can fix it - that’s empowering. As I delved deeper into the world of early stage startups, I discovered all of the wonderful twists and turns they bring. The early days of a company’s life are an exhilarating era filled with the highest highs, lowest lows, scrappy ingenuity, and a unique camaraderie that forms when you spend all of your time in the office building a company - only leaving to sleep on an air mattress in a backyard shack shared with the same team. I loved turning mere ideas into tangible things, achieving milestones, and aiming for new ones. I’m fortunate to have experienced this across various industries, from training fullstack software engineers at Codesmith, to modernizing withdrawal options through gift cards at Prizeout, to providing access to affordable medications at SIRUM. I hope to apply these learnings to support founders from the other side of the table.
What makes you most excited about your new role with Hyde Park Venture Partners?
I’m most excited about three things: discovering, learning and supporting. My mission is to discover and accelerate exceptional companies. Along the way, I am grateful to have the opportunity to continue learning about new technologies, industries, and business models. Following an investment, I aim to leverage my experiences as a founder to assist our entrepreneurs in navigating through the evolution of their companies. I am excited for how startups will continue to change our lives and thrilled to be part of that journey.
Hyde Park Venture Partners is thrilled to have Victoria join our team and we hope you will join us in wishing her a warm welcome!
