Mark Suster

Suster recently wrote a post describing his favorite entrepreneur story in a while. It's the tale of Sriracha hot sauce creator David Tran, who fled Vietnam in the ...

To Our Clients & Friends: Welcome to our weekly series “Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed.” Each week, we share a favorite video clip of a successful entrepreneur, investor or business leader on a variety of topics. This week, we again present Mark Suster, one of my favorite VC’s.

Mark Suster is a two-time entrepreneur (the founder of Koral and BuildOnline) turned venture capitalist (focused primarily on early stage tech companies). He joined Upfront Ventures in 2007 as a General Partner after selling his company to Salesforce.com. His background in computer networking and system modeling afforded him some enviable gigs abroad and he was able to get his MBA from the University of Chicago paid for by his employer. Of this time, he says, “I got to work for a three year period of time as a ‘strategy consultant,’ which meant I became a blackbelt in PowerPoint and Excel.”

Mark Suster, managing partner at venture capital firm Upfront Ventures, is a big proponent of L.A.'s growing tech scene. Here's his career path and some advice.