Selby Venture Partners

Selby Venture Partners

Selby Venture Partners was founded in 1999 in the San Francisco Bay Area by Eric Buatois and Gary Morihara. The firm emerged at the tail end of the dot-com era but survived by focusing on technical founders, not consumer hype. Buatois brought operating experience from Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard, while Morihara added engineering and venture depth. That operational DNA set the firm's course for two decades of investing in enterprise and deep-technology startups. The firm's strategy concentrates on seed and Series A investments in enterprise software, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, industrial technology, and energy transition. Selby prefers to lead or co-lead rounds, often as the first institutional capital in a company. Positions have included early bets on companies such as Pliant Technology, an enterprise flash storage company acquired by SanDisk, and 3PAR, a utility storage provider that went public and was later acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The geographic focus remains predominantly the United States, with an emphasis on West Coast founders. Team size and total deployment figures are not publicly disclosed, reflecting the firm's historically low profile. Selby does not operate separate growth funds, philanthropic arms, or public club structures, instead concentrating capital in a concentrated early-stage portfolio. The firm's activity has been subdued in the last decade relative to its earlier pace, with limited public announcements of new fundraises or large team expansions. Selby's structural differentiator lies in its longevity inside a generationally over-subscribed early-stage market. While hundreds of seed funds launched and folded since 1999, Selby persisted through three major tech cycles. The firm's model depends on deep engineering due diligence and long holding periods, which has yielded exits across storage, networking, and software infrastructure without the need to scale headcount or chase massive AUM growth.