Aydin Senkut
Who they are
Aydin Senkut is Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis Ventures — Google's 63rd employee and first Product Manager, who left to build a VC firm that has backed Shopify, Notion, and Canva from early-stage.
Person
Aydin earned a BS in Business Administration (Honors) from Boston University in 1992, then an MBA in Marketing from Wharton in 1996 and a Master's in International Studies from Penn — an unusual academic trifecta that spans commerce, strategy, and global context. Before VC he cycled through Hoffmann-La Roche, Silicon Graphics, and finance roles before landing at Google as employee #63 and its first Product Manager, eventually rising to Senior Manager for Web Search and Syndication. He founded Felicis in 2006 as a single-person angel vehicle — the first institutional fund didn't come until 2010 — so the firm is really a two-decade compounding project built from scratch. He's also an Associate Founder of Singularity University, the technology-and-global-challenges education outfit. The through-line is a generalist who keeps moving toward the next platform shift: pharma → workstations → the early web → early-stage software and AI. He speaks publicly on VC strategy, founder-aligned governance, and AI investing — including a Capital Allocators podcast episode with Ted Seides titled 'Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis' and a piece for The Generalist arguing that being a generalist VC is a competitive advantage.
Company
Felicis closed its tenth fund at $900 million in June 2025 — its largest ever — bringing assets under management to $3.8 billion. The raise came alongside a notable team addition: Peter Deng, former Consumer VP of OpenAI's ChatGPT team, joined the firm in 2025. Felicis also led both the Series B and Series C funding rounds for Mercor, an AI-driven recruiting startup, signaling active deployment into AI-native companies. The firm believes dozens of $100B+ AI companies will emerge this decade, and 70% of its active portfolio is now AI-native startups.
Market
Felicis operates in the early-stage venture capital market, competing against other generalist and multi-stage funds for access to the best pre-seed and seed-stage technology deals across AI, cybersecurity, health, and biotech. Forbes characterizes it as a 'nimble boutique VC, able to move faster than larger funds' — a positioning that trades on speed and founder relationships rather than balance-sheet dominance. The broader VC market is being reshaped by the AI wave, and Felicis is explicitly leaning into that thesis: the firm's tenth fund is sized to back the next generation of AI-native companies at formation.
Network
No direct relationship edges were available for Aydin. His professional adjacencies can be inferred from the firm: Peter Deng (former Consumer VP at OpenAI's ChatGPT) joined Felicis in 2025 and would be a close working contact. He also serves on the Wharton School Graduate Executive Board, connecting him to a long-running Penn alumni network.
- Peter Deng· Partner at Felicis Ventures (former Consumer VP, OpenAI ChatGPT)
- Ted Seides· Host, Capital Allocators Podcast
- Sonia Arrison· Author and technologist
How they likely show up
- Founded Felicis in 2006 as a solo angel vehicle and built it to $3.8B AUM over nearly two decades → thinks in decade-long arcs and is comfortable with slow compounding rather than quick wins.
- Google employee #63 and first PM, then left to start a fund when institutional VC was the established path → high agency; willing to bet on himself before there's a playbook.
- Publicly argues that being a generalist VC is a competitive advantage (The Generalist piece) → frames breadth as a deliberate strategy, not a default; will defend unconventional positioning.
- Speaks on 'tenacious sourcing and founder support' as distinct capabilities → likely prioritizes relationship density and follow-through over dealflow volume.
- Fluent in five languages (Turkish, English, French, German, Portuguese) → signals genuine cross-cultural operating range, not just US-centric pattern matching.
- Possibly — occasional public writing signal suggests he's selective about where he puts his voice, meaning when he does show up publicly, it's deliberate and considered.
Conversation tips
- → Reference his generalist thesis by name — he's made a public argument for it in The Generalist; engaging with the actual argument, not just the label, will land.
- → Ask about the early Google days (employee #63, first PM) — it's a formative credential and the origin story of his founder intuition.
- → Don't treat Felicis as a typical Sand Hill fund — he's built a differentiated identity around speed and boutique positioning; acknowledge that distinction.
- → The Capital Allocators podcast episode is a good reference point — it signals he thinks carefully about LP relationships and sourcing craft, not just deal returns.
- → If the conversation touches biotech or global resilience, he has genuine personal investment there (UCSF support, Singularity University) — it's not just a fund thesis.
Toolbox
Openers
- Open on the tenth fund close — $900M in June 2025, the firm's largest ever, with Peter Deng (ex-OpenAI ChatGPT Consumer VP) joining the team. It's a meaningful inflection point after nearly two decades of building.
- Reference his Mercor conviction — Felicis led both the Series B and Series C of the AI recruiting startup, which is an unusually deep doubling-down on a single AI-native company and signals something specific about how he sizes into winners.
- Bring up the generalist VC argument — he made the case publicly in The Generalist that breadth is a structural edge, not a compromise. It's a genuinely contrarian position in a market full of sector-specialist funds.
Discovery questions
- You've argued generalism is a competitive advantage — with 70% of your active portfolio now AI-native, how do you think about where the edges of that generalism sit?
- What did running Web Search and Syndication at Google teach you about what a product actually needs to scale — and how does that shape how you pressure-test founders today?
- Felicis led both the Series B and Series C in Mercor — what does a company have to show you to earn that kind of repeated conviction across rounds?
Avoid
Don't open with generic AI hype or macro VC trend talk — he has a specific, articulated thesis about AI-native company formation and will want to engage at that level of precision, not at the level of a conference keynote.
Make it yours
Tailor these openers to what you sell
These openers are generic. Sign in and tell Brief what you sell — it rewrites the hooks and questions around your pitch.
Sources
Brief on your next meeting?
Type any name. Get a structured pre-meeting brief in seconds.
Try Brief →Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on June 5, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.
Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →