Ben Metcalfe
Ben has a unique, demonstrable cross-discipline set of skills and is just as comfortable debugging serverless code for his Amazon Alexa as he is designing a 12-month marketing plan for a portfolio company, developing a set of user stories for a new product or brainstorming lobbying efforts to help a startup in a regulated environment.
Ben has no formal education or qualifications beyond secondary school (high school).
Ben is the founder and partner of Monochrome Capital, where he primarily makes seed-stage investments in B2B startups. Areas of focus include SaaS, marketplaces, frontier technologies, and startups with a strong machine-learning, open source, or infrastructure component.
Prior to establishing Monochrome Ben served as a Principle at Ridge Ventures for almost three years - sourcing and leading his own Series A deals, as well as assisting in the diligence process of other firm deals.
Before moving into venture, Ben was a founder of WP Engine, the world's leading WordPress Digital Experience Platform which is now a unicorn valuation startup. With over $150M in annual recurring revenue and 750+ employees across five global offices, WP Engine powers over 500K websites belonging to the world's premier brands and Fortune 500 companies. Ben led marketing and open source ecosystem strategy.
Ben also served as Head of Revolution, Uber's public policy innovation team, which he created and led while he was a Senior Product Manager. Uber Revolution developed several successful activism campaigns and also launched Beethoven, Uber's acclaimed program and product features for deaf and hard-of-hearing drivers.
He began his career as a software engineer at the prestigious BBC News Website at the age of 18, later moving on to design and running the BBC's developer platform. He took a similar role at MySpace upon relocating from his native London to San Francisco in 2006.
As a member of Class 23, Ben served his fellowship at Ridge Ventures