Sydney Thomas
She also participates in several activities to increase diversity in tech and level the playing field for underrepresented populations. She is the creator of The Interrupters – a list that highlights investors committed to investing in black and LatinX founders. She serves on the Advisory Board of Invanti – a startup generator in the midwest. She is deeply involved in her community, Longfellow Oakland. In 2020, she was honored to receive the Champion of Justice Award from Esq. Apprentice, an Oakland-based nonprofit she supports that creates alternative pathways to the legal career. She was also appointed by the Mayor to serve as a Commissioner for the City of Oakland’s Public Safety and Services Commission. She is also a member of the 4.0 Angel Syndicate – a community of Black philanthropists. Sydney graduated from Berkeley with her MBA and Duke with her BA.
Sydney is the Founder and General Partner at Symphonic Capital a Pre-Seed fund that backs companies at their earliest stages and guides them to product-market-fit. The founder and GP, Sydney Thomas, spent almost 6 years building and investing out of Precursor Ventures - a premier Pre-Seed fund - and is using that expertise to build Impressionism Capital. Symphonic Capital backs founders building technology that makes life better for the 99% - a thesis Sydney has been cultivating throughout her career and that has spurred her 15 investments in what are soon to be category-defining companies such as Aidaly, Guava, Carda, Boost, and Brightflow. At Precursor Ventures she led deals and focused her time on investing in and supporting Pre-Seed companies that democratize access to products and services for the mass market economy. To increase knowledge of these types of companies, she founded and hosts the Be About It podcast, where she profiles companies that fit this thesis. When Sydney first joined Precursor almost 6 years ago, she built the software and systems that grew the firm from a Solo Operating GP with 10 investments to a 3-person team with 100+ investments. Before joining Precursor, Sydney gained experience working in technology startups in business development and product marketing. She has done everything from writing federal SBIR grants to managing customer success teams. Prior to her work in tech, she served in the Bloomberg Administration in NYC. Over the course of her tenure, she drafted federal legislation, negotiated a multi-million dollar contract and received a full-ride scholarship to her business school of choice.
As a member of Class 26, Sydney is serving her fellowship at Impressionism Capital under the mentorship of Miriam Rivera, a Kauffman Fellows of Class 15.