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Aydin Senkut

Entrepreneur and Investor

Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner at Felicis Ventures

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis Ventures, a venture capital firm he started in 2005. He has been named to the Forbes Midas List for the past 11 consecutive years from 2014 to 2024, as well as the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists list for 4 years in a row from 2016 to 2019.2

Prior to founding Felicis, Aydin held several roles at Google from 1999 to 2005, including being the company's first Product Manager to launch its first 10 international sites, first online search licensing products, and first Safe Search. He then became Google's first International Sales Manager responsible for worldwide licensing deals.12

Before Google, Aydin was a Product Manager at Silicon Graphics, Inc. for data visualization and data mining software MineSet, and led business development efforts for the financial services industry.1

Aydin received a BS in Business Administration with Honors from Boston University, an MBA in Marketing from the Wharton School, and an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks five languages: English, German, French, Portuguese and Turkish.1

The Felicis portfolio encompasses over 50 companies including Adyen, Canva, Credit Karma, Fitbit, Guardant Health, Guideline, Notion, Opendoor, Pluralsight, Rovio, Shopify, and Soundhound. In the last four years, 20 Felicis-backed startups have been acquired by firms such as Google, Twitter, Groupon, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Ebay, Chegg and Intuit.1

Highlights

Apr 12 · twitter

This is so impressive from @SkildAI - one of the hardest things to do is super light grip strength and agility - no better demo than making an omelette…

Apr 8 · twitter

Q1 2026 was a huge quarter for Felicis – $2.55B in announced portfolio funding !!
🚀 $902M in new investments 🚀 $2.4B in follow-on funding 🚀 3 new roles on the Felicis team

New funding for: → @EntireHQ - the world's next developer platform (Seed) → @corridor - proactive security for the code gen era (Series A) → @smackaistack - the frontier lab for national security (Seed + Series A) → @RicursiveAI - a step change on the path to AGI (Series A) → @humansand - creating AI-native human relationships (Seed) → @deeptraceai - AI-powered security and reliability platform (Seed)

Follow-on funding announced in: @SkildAI, @Revel_Software, @Runwayml, @Midihealth, @Paraformtalent, @procurewithORO, @depotdev, Condor, @RapidFortInc, Knox, @Standard_Kernel, and more.

The Felicis team continued to shine 🤩 → @DetweilerJames was promoted to General Partner → @EricFlaningam was promoted to Partner → @ben_mathes joined as Head of AI

And we also launched a new look for Felicis which captures the heart and soul of who we are: Relentlessly founder first. Unabashedly optimistic. Full of imagination. We move fast and early. We prioritize first principles over consensus. We build trust into every touchpoint. And we believe you engineer your own luck.

None of this happens without the Felicis team. Thank you for your unwavering commitment, for showing up for founders every day, and for continuing to crush it !! ⚡ 🤩

Can’t wait for Q2 2026 !!

Q1 2026 was a huge quarter for Felicis – $2.55B in announced portfolio funding !!  
🚀  $902M in new
Jan 6 · Business Insider
The AI Power List
Jun 13 · TechCrunch
After a string of successes, early-stage fund Felicis raises fresh $900M
After a string of successes, early-stage fund Felicis raises fresh $900M
Nov 2 · cooleygo.com
Aydin Senkut on the State of Venture Capital Investing | Cooley GO
Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures on angel to 9 time Midas list ...

Related Questions

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What are some of the key lessons Aydin Senkut has learned from his career?
Aydin Senkut
Aydin Senkut, photo 1
Aydin Senkut, photo 2
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Experience

Felicis

Education

University of Pennsylvania / SAIS

Location

San Francisco Bay Area