Bob Haigler

Bob Haigler is a software architect and technical founder best known as the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of SparkGift, a Y Combinator–backed (Winter 2015) fintech startup that made it easy to send stocks, ETFs, and index funds as gifts in small, fractional-share denominations (e.g., a $20 stake in Apple or a Vanguard fund). He co-founded the company with CEO Peggy Mangot (later a partner at PayPal Ventures and an innovation leader at Wells Fargo) and co-founder Tia Gao. The three shared a vision that giving someone an investment should be as easy as giving a retail gift card.

Haigler holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Before SparkGift he accumulated more than 15 years of experience in engineering, management, and technical-leadership roles, including work on distributed systems for financial and scientific computing at Sun Microsystems and at various startups. This combination of financial-systems depth and consumer-product engineering positioned him to build SparkGift's brokerage-and-gifting infrastructure.

In 2016, SparkGift was acquired by Stockpile, a fractional-share brokerage with a closely aligned mission of making investing accessible to everyone. Haigler and Mangot joined Stockpile as part of the deal. His LinkedIn identity ("Software Architect") reflects a career centered on hands-on technical leadership rather than a formal investment-firm role.

• Associated with seed-stage activity as an angel/individual investor per the source data.
• Operating expertise concentrated in fintech and consumer financial products — brokerage, fractional shares, gifting, and financial-access tooling — the domains where his SparkGift and Stockpile work would give him the most conviction and diligence advantage.
• SparkGift's founding thesis, which reflects his mission-level interests: *"it should be as easy to give someone an investment in the future as it is to give someone a retail gift card,"* aimed at democratizing investing and reaching first-time/young investors.
• No publicly stated personal check size, portfolio construction, or formal fund could be verified; a founder should treat him as an operator-angel whose value-add is technical and fintech-domain, not as an institutional lead.