Ken Sawyer

Managing Director & Founder, Saints

Ken Sawyer is a managing director and founder of Saints. Saints is a venture capital and private equity firm founded in 2000 focused on providing liquidity for investors and founders of private companies. The concept of creating a firm that provided liquidity for illiquid venture capital and private equity investments met with a great deal of skepticism in 2000 but now enjoys popular acceptance and has demonstrated attractive returns for investors. Saints has acquired investments in over 400 companies. Mr/ Sawyer has invested in companies in the technology, healthcare, consumer and industrial industries. Since inception, Saints has had over 50 IPO’s in both US and international markets and over 200 exits through acquisition.

Notable investments include: Aver, Chegg, Conviva, Eventbrite, Facebook, Gilt Groupe, Hootsuite, Impossible Foods, LOB, NYSHEX, OneMedical, Palantir, Rent the Runway, Sidestep (Kayak), Smartrecruiters, Smugmug, Square, Tellme, ZocDoc and others. Mr. Sawyer focuses his investing efforts on the software, internet and life sciences industries and has been a director or board observer for dozens of companies. Mr. Sawyer has been selected in the past as a member of the Forbes Midas list, where he was recognized as one of the top 100 investors in venture capital globally.

Mr. Sawyer is also a Partner for Crossover Ventures – an early-stage fund-of-funds focused on operator led micro-venture capital funds. Mr. Sawyer is also a senior advisor for Industrial Development Funding – a fund focused on providing cost effective debt financing for the aviation and power generation industries. Mr. Sawyer serves as a board member and founder of CribEquity – an early-stage proptech company.

Mr. Sawyer is also on the board of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and serves on the board of the Woodrow Wilson Center – Latin American Program, and Socrates (young leader) program for the Aspen Institute. Previously Mr. Sawyer served as a “kitchen cabinet” advisor to the CEO of the Chicago Public School system.

Mr. Sawyer received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS with honors in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University. At Stanford, Mr. Sawyer was elected as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi honor societies. Mr. Sawyer also studied in France, Washington, D.C., and at the Copenhagen School of Business in Denmark.