Shripriya Mahesh

Shripriya Mahesh is the co-founder and a General Partner of Spero Ventures, an early-stage venture firm launched in 2018 that invests in "the things that make life worth living" — wellbeing, sustainability, and learning, work and play. Spero was spun out of Omidyar Network, where Mahesh had previously run the Emerging Tech venture investing group. She built the firm around the idea that "everyone deserves the opportunity to live a good life, and technology should help further that goal."

Before venturing into full-time investing, Mahesh spent much of her operating career at eBay, where she held a series of senior leadership roles including Vice President and Head of Global Product Management and Strategy, VP of U.S. Product Marketing and Platform, and VP of Corporate Strategy. Earlier, she was VP of eCommerce at NextCard. In 2023 she returned to eBay as a member of its Board of Directors, where she chairs the board's Technology Committee.

Her background is unusually multidisciplinary. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Stella Maris College (Madras University), an M.F.A. in Film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. As a filmmaker, she directed Academy Award nominees James Franco and Jessica Chastain as part of a collaborative feature that premiered at the Rome Film Festival and had a theatrical release — a creative sensibility she brings to how she evaluates founders and products.

• Invests at seed and Series A in mission-driven, purpose-led founders building technology that improves human life across wellbeing/health, sustainability, and how people learn, work, play, and connect.
• Check size: roughly $2M–$4M initial investments (documented range ~$250K–$5M), typically leading or co-leading rounds of $3M–$10M, from a ~$100M fund, with capital reserved for follow-on rounds.
• Central evaluation question is deliberately simple: "What could this company become?" — she backs founders with "an internal compass of purpose."
• Values she screens for in leaders: integrity, a purpose-driven mindset paired with building profitable/scalable businesses, and accountability — including taking "ownership of the impact our products have on the world."
• Tends to avoid advertising, cloud infrastructure, sales/CRM, and security-focused startups, favoring instead future of work, health, agtech, and networks & marketplaces.
• Advice she gives founders reflects her filter: "Focus on building your business and not what others around you are doing. Forget FoMO."