Greg Robinson

Greg Robinson is Co-Managing Director (general partner) of 4490 Ventures, a Madison, Wisconsin–based early-stage technology venture fund he helped launch in 2014. The firm — named for the geographic coordinates of the University of Wisconsin–Madison — was created and anchored by the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), initially as a roughly $30M fund, with a later fund reported in the $65M–$75M range. Robinson was recruited to run it, bringing coastal venture experience to the Midwest, and today leads investment strategy alongside co-Managing Director Dan Malven.

Robinson has more than two decades of operating and venture capital experience. Before 4490, he was a Managing Director at Peninsula Ventures in Palo Alto, where he invested in roughly 20 early-stage startups and sat on numerous boards (including Axcient, Green Plug, SeeControl, and Intesource). Earlier in his career he co-founded and served as Chief Operating Officer of Cogent Technologies, an enterprise software company that was acquired by a publicly traded firm (BrightStar).

He holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a B.S. in Economics from Arizona State University. Robinson is a frequent speaker in the Madison startup community (Startup Grind, 100state) and has appeared on venture podcasts such as Upside discussing how to lead Series A/B rounds in underserved markets.

• Fill the Series A gap outside Silicon Valley. Robinson deliberately positions 4490 as a Series A *lead* between local seed money and coastal Series B investors: "if you're trying to raise six to $12 million in a Series A… there's just not a lot of people that want to write that big of a check."
• "Connected Software." The firm favors companies "more akin to proprietary data, analytics, or hardware-enabled businesses than traditional purpose-built software" — software that is defensible because it is tied to unique data or hardware.
• Screens for problem complexity over early revenue. His evaluation questions: "Is it a complex problem? Is it protectable over time?" — plus a large market of customers with money to spend, a capable and appropriately ambitious team, and capital efficiency.
• High-conviction, concentrated. Roughly one to two new investments per partner per year, leading rounds with checks that historically centered on ~$4M and a $5M–$8M sweet spot (range $1M–$15M).
• Geographic conviction. Focused on the Upper Midwest and other emerging hubs "closer to where industry expertise and end customers are," within reasonable travel distance for frequent, hands-on engagement.
• Raises founder ambition. Robinson pushes Midwest founders to resist premature exits and "stick with this for another five to eight to ten years."