From a Humble Research Analyst to Head of Operations For a Global Investment Firm in Just 4 Years, This Woman is Making An Impact

Key Person of Interest Spotlight — Giulianna Crivello

I first came across Giulianna from an online Ad for EntryLevel promoting a VC Analyst course. I was intrigued by the companies and names involved so I wanted to do a little research.

Giulianna seems to be the main person delivering the course and is currently Head Of Ventures at Draper Startup House. She’s based in Singapore and manages a global operation of investments into startup companies.

Draper Startup House was founded in 2018 by Tim Draper and joined by Vikram Bharati with a mission to expand to 100 countries by 2030 and help create 1 million new entrepreneurs worldwide through their global business ecosystem.

Tim has had a number of venture successes including: Skype, Baidu, Tesla, Overture, PTC, Hotmail, Twitch, Robinhood, Carta, Coinbase.

Draper’s network companies manage over two billion US dollars across 24 global funds.

Guilianna joined Draper Startup House in November 2019 as Head of Branding & Marketing, then moved into Head of Ventures, General Partner after just 7 months in May 2020.

History

Giulianna started out in Nevada where she went to college and then moved into a Research Analyst role with Castle Crow & Company. Progressing through various roles such as Business Development and Deal Associate, she moved to Singapore in September 2018 to start a new position as Director of Strategic Growth for Privé Technologies.

It looks like she had a total of 5 roles over 4 years. Not one to waste time. Also managed to launch a startup herself and worked independently as a Startup Advisor during that period.

Her latest employment with Draper seems to have been her longest stint with a single company. Not staying more than 2 years in previous roles, her career has progressed quickly and shows her ambition.

Having started with Draper Startup house in November 2019, it’s now over 3 years with them and she is making great headway.

Investments

In a recent post, Crivello details 21 investments represented over 14 different countries, all in just one year including:

Companies: Ferne Health, Hybr1d — Now hiring! ⚡️ Eblity, VirtualSpeech, HEX, ConfirmU, Giftpack, intribe, Fyn, Insured Nomads, Request Finance, Sketchnote, DIFT CORP., Panarum Corp, Headquarters (HQ.xyz), ShipShap, Middleware, Neroes, Brevity, Olik

This post seemed to celebrating their first year milestone after the Draper global fund was announced on 12 October, 2021.

“We’re leading along with the major trend that shows founders are less reliant on fundraising in their own countries while creating high-growth global products,” Crivello stated. “We’re taking interest in this, and we’ve also been taking bets on founders who are challenging the status quo.”

Insights

I always find it fascinating to look at someone’s career and how they progressed through various roles to end up where they are. It’s a benchmark or gauge of sorts to notice what is possible and where people have come from.

Today’s job market is very different to that of even 10 years ago and vastly different to 20 years ago. People move quickly and role types now especially in tech are evolving rapidly.

I’ll be looking further into this VC Investor course as I noticed a couple names involved that piqued my interest.