Patrick Eggen
Founding General Partner
We believe in teamwork and that everyone has a role to play. Intellect is nothing without hard work, a little bit of luck and executing on fortunate timing. We model ourselves on those who perservere, challenge the status quo and are not afraid to admit when they are wrong.
Patrick opened and led Qualcomm Ventures’ SF/Bay Area practice. Additionally he founded Qualcomm’s Global Early Stage Fund, focused on Seed and Series A opportunities. This Early Stage Fund was the first of its kind in any Corporate Venture Capital organization. Under his leadership, he scaled the Fund to 70+ investments, which include big wins such as Cruise Automation (acquired by GM), 99
Patrick led the Zoom investment which was the largest absolute return in QCV history. He actively sourced or served as a Board Member/Observer for QCV investments in Clarifai, Cloudflare, Matterport, Noom, OpenSignal, Particle, Plivo, Sense360, Sparta Science, and Swift Nav. Additionally he worked very closely and co-sponsored Ring (acquired by AMZN) and Waze (acquired by GOOG). Prior investments (exits) include Aicent, Avaak (acquired by NTGR), Divide (acquired by GOOG), Clicker (acquired by CBS), Magisto (acquired by IAC), Starmaker, Tempo.AI (acquired by CRM), ThinkNear (acquired by TNAV) and Viewdle (acquired by GOOG).
Prior to joining Qualcomm Ventures, Patrick worked for Citigroup Investment Banking unit in their Chicago, London and Hong Kong offices. He was a member of their Global Telecommunications team, involved in both M&A advisory roles and capital-raising transactions. Patrick has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.A. from Northwestern University.
Joe Saijo
Founding General Partner
Joe’s background is in IT where he started his career as a software engineer in Japan and then worked with Hitachi.
From 2007-2011 Joe was the Manager of Business Development at Hitachi and from 2014-2017 he served as the President and Managing Partner at Recruit Strategic Partners, the CVC vehicle of Recruit Holdings, Japan’s largest HR/media company.
Joe was responsible for the investment and portfolio strategy of Recruit Strategic Partners, managing over 100 portfolio companies worldwide (40 of which were based in the US).
Joe shifted the organization’s geographic focus towards the US market, and successfully invested in 30 startups over a 3.5 year period in San Francisco. Whilst at Recruit Strategic Partners, his most notable investments include Palo Alto Networks(NYSE : PANW), DocuSign(NASDAQ: DOCU), 99designs(Acq’d by Vistaprint), Noom, DataRobot and ShipBob. Joe was responsible for transforming Recruit’s investment arm to a disciplined and agile CVC unit with a fast decision-making process, thesis and financially driven strategy. Joe also helped Recruit’s portfolio companies develop their businesses in Japan through his network.
Joe’s expertise is in B2B SaaS and marketplace technologies.
Mikey Kailis
Head of Operations & Senior Associate
Mikey grew up in Perth, Western Australia where he attended the University of Notre Dame (BA) & University of Western Australia (MCom). Mikey worked as a journalist after completing his Bachelor of Arts in 2011. Following journalism he studied business management and began working with and advising startups, most recently in the mining and resources industry. From 2013 to 2015 he helped manage an Asia Pacific wide competition aimed at identifying and funding promising seed stage startups by providing access to capital and Silicon Valley investors.
From 2015 to 2018 Mikey worked with global mining and resources companies to address the sector’s challenges in Australia, North America and Africa. Mikey identified promising startups building new technologies to solve the sector’s challenges and helped establish pilot projects. He worked with innovation and digital transformation teams and holds a keen interest in bringing about disruption to industries such as mining, agriculture, logistics and transport.
Mikey enjoys advising entrepreneurs and startups solving real-world problems. He takes an active role in growing early stage companies by getting hands on with Counterpart’s founders, brokering introductions to customers and scaling quickly but methodically.
Mikey moved from Perth to San Francisco in 2018 and helps manage Counterpart’s portfolio, general operations, deal flow, marketing and corporate venture capital network Counter Club.
He is an die hard Manchester United fan and avid long distance runner.