Tyler Sosin

Tyler is a partner at Menlo Ventures focused on investing in technology-enabled services and products that are positioned to compound their growth efficiently for a very long time, vis-à-vis sticky long-term relationships with customers and partners. He has coined these businesses “layer cakes” (resulting from customer revenues looking like annuities, stacked on top of each other). He often finds that these businesses are the beneficiaries of network effects, liquidity moats, replenishment channels, habit formation (driven by high frequency transactions), real switching costs (i.e., data lock-in) and perceived switching costs (i.e., the avoidance of cognitive burden). He jokes that his goal is to back a business that one day Warren Buffett would like to buy because of its enduring value. He knows he’s running out of time.

Tyler looks for annuity-driven businesses across a wide variety of markets and verticals. He is, to a certain extent, category-agnostic. But he is constantly on the lookout for fast-growing businesses that fit within certain archetypes, like workflow SaaS, systems of records, replenishment e-commerce, marketplaces, data networks, and transactions processors. His investments include Alloy.AI, BitPay, BlueVine, Bread Finance, Carta, Envoy, Everlaw, FiveStars, HomeLight, PillPack (sold to Amazon), Qualia, RealtyShares, Stance, and tCell.io.

Between being an analyst and a principal at Menlo, he enjoyed a three-year stint at Accel Partners in London, where as an associate he sourced investments Aorato (sold to Microsoft), GoCardless, FlyWire, and Calastone. Tyler holds a bachelor of arts in international relations from Stanford University. In his free time, he enjoys playing golf, skiing, traveling, reading fiction and history (of all sorts), and playing chess (improving, but still consistently crushed by his older brother).