Bessemer Venture Partners promotes Aia Sarycheva to Vice President

At Bessemer, forward-thinking research and roadmap expertise drive our ability to back founders with conviction. In this spirit, we celebrate the promotion of Aia Sarycheva to Vice President. Since joining Bessemer in 2022, Aia has been a dedicated collaborator with ambitious entrepreneurs worldwide as they launch novel technologies into their given markets or commercialize with inventive business models.  

Aia primarily focuses on early-stage investments in artificial intelligence and B2B cloud software, with a particular emphasis on application-layer AI and vertical software. She currently serves as a board observer for several portfolio companies, including Electric, Goodship, Optimal Dynamics, Raft, Rohirrim, and Tackle. Her investment focus spans innovative AI technologies and software for sectors that have experienced minimal digitization.

Throughout her tenure at Bessemer, Aia has contributed to Atlas roadmaps on Vertical AI and Bessemer's 2024 State of the Cloud report. She helped develop Bessemer’s new Vertical AI roadmap series, co-created the key frameworks for building and assessing Vertical AI businesses, and led thesis development for multimodal and agent-based AI technologies serving functions and industries that didn’t meaningfully benefit from the previous wave of vertical software. She has also built roadmaps on software for legacy industries, including supply chain and climate tech.

"Aia's ability to synthesize lessons from technological breakthroughs, industry developments, and historical venture-backed successes make her an asset to our team and the founders we support," shares Bob Goodman, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. "Her work in demystifying the venture capital process for founders aligns perfectly with our commitment to supporting entrepreneurs around the globe."

"The most exciting part about being a venture capitalist is getting to imagine what the future might look like by learning from and supporting the people building it," says Aia. "I have the privilege of seeing the world through the eyes of founders who dedicate years to solving problems they're passionate about. My role is to draw on lessons from recent technological breakthroughs, industry developments, and the paths of prior venture-backed companies to support them in building enduring businesses. This requires developing a view on when to learn from the past and when to break from it—an exciting, intellectually rigorous, and inherently synergistic process."

Before joining Bessemer, Aia worked at Revolution's Rise of the Rest Fund, focusing on investing in startups in the interior of the U.S. Prior to her role at Revolution, she worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University. 

Outside of work, Aia serves on the Board of Advisors at Chess-in-the-Schools, a nonprofit providing chess education to NYC public school students. She is passionate about the role of tech innovation and industrial policy in driving economic opportunity across the U.S. and has written for The Brookings Institution about the role of technology, finance, and public policy in bolstering U.S. innovation and catalyzing place-based economic development. An avid hiker, Aia has completed multi-day backpacking trips including the Laugavegur trail, Patagonia O circuit, and the Kepler track.

To learn more about Aia and her work at Bessemer, follow her on X at @AiaSarycheva.