Joseph Kell

Joseph Kell is the Chief Financial Officer of Rising Tide, a Silicon Valley venture capital fund (domain rtf.vc). He joined the firm in 2008 and oversees its financial operations — investment valuation, financial reporting, investor relations, and SEC compliance — while also participating in fund formation, deal review, term-sheet preparation, due diligence, and portfolio management. Beyond the numbers, he has worked directly with portfolio companies on financial management, business planning, and M&A support including post-merger integration.

Before Rising Tide, Kell was a venture-capital and technology-focused audit manager at Ireland San Filippo, where he oversaw a portfolio of seed, growth, venture-debt, SBIC, and buyout funds as well as venture-backed technology companies. That audit-and-fund background is the foundation for his current CFO role across multiple entities. He has served on boards and audit committees, including at BDNA Corporation (acquired by Flexera in 2017) and Delivery Agent.

His CFO responsibilities have extended to affiliated organizations in the Rising Tide orbit: he has served as CFO of Techwadi, a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit that builds entrepreneurship bridges between Silicon Valley and the MENA region, and as CFO of Wearable World, a San Francisco incubator/accelerator for wearable-technology startups. He has also contributed civically as a member of the City of Pacifica's Financing City Services Task Force.

Kell earned a BS in Business Administration with an accounting minor from Saint Mary's College of California (2001) and is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in California.

• Backs transformative deep-technology companies across biotech/personalized medicine, AI, space and communications, fintech/blockchain, and medical devices — with a stated mission of technologies that "serve humanity."
• Invests primarily at seed and early stage (average seed round ~$2.5M), and continues to participate through later rounds (Series A ~$14M, Series B ~$19M, Series C ~$72M average round sizes across the fund).
• Global mandate rooted in Silicon Valley, with distinctive reach into the MENA region through affiliated efforts like Techwadi.
• As CFO, Kell's lens is heavily financial and operational — valuation discipline, deal review, term-sheet structuring, and diligence — rather than purely thesis-driven sourcing.