Stacy Swider

Stacy is a VP Investments at Mass Ventures. She has a background in commercializing novel materials and the equipment to make them. After graduating from MIT, she started her career in Silicon Valley at a thin-film diamond startup. She transitioned this experience into technical sales for an MIT spinout that developed semiconductor equipment for enterprise customers. After that, she co-founded a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) emulation startup. After getting that company off the ground, she returned to materials science and worked for the Air Force Research Laboratory, and later commercialized novel nuclear detectors.

After over 25 years in industry and startups, she transitioned to coaching startups. She helped stand up the UMass Lowell Research Institute, where she was Director of its SBIR Center. Now at MassVentures, she leverages her technical and business experience to source, mentor, and fund promising new deep-tech startups in Massachusetts. She also administers MassVentures’ START Program, and is a subcommittee chair for the Small Business Administration’s Investment Capital Advisory Committee.