Vanessa Larco

Who they are

Vanessa Larco is co-founder of Premise VC — a Georgia Tech CS grad who led speech recognition product at Xbox Kinect before spending eight years as a partner at NEA, then co-founded her own early-stage consumer fund with Mercedes Bent in 2025.

Person

Vanessa studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech (BS, 2008), then moved through product roles that traced the arc of consumer tech: Gaming Studio Lead and Product Manager at Disney Social/Playdom, Lead for Speech Recognition Experience at Xbox Kinect/Microsoft, and somewhere along the way founded and sold a mobile gaming startup. She crossed into venture from the operator side — a path she has written about publicly — and spent eight years at New Enterprise Associates, rising to Senior Partner. She left NEA in early 2025 to co-found Premise VC with Mercedes Bent, an early-stage fund focused on Consumer Tech (B2C) and Consumer Enablement Tech (B2B2C), backing technical founders at pre-seed and seed. The through-line is building consumer products at scale — gaming, voice interfaces, mobile — then deploying that operator instinct from the investor seat. She writes actively on LinkedIn and TechCrunch on founder advice, AI in SaaS, SaaS pricing, VC fundraising dynamics, and startup timing — practical, pattern-matched takes from someone who has seen both sides of the pitch table. She speaks at FinovateFall and HumanX (2026), and has been involved with All Raise as a mentor in the VC community.

Company

Vanessa co-founded Premise VC in early 2025 after departing NEA, where she had spent eight years. The firm is focused on pre-seed and seed investing in Consumer Tech (B2C) and Consumer Enablement Tech (B2B2C), with an AI emphasis, and backs technical founders. She built it alongside Mercedes Bent. The fund is still in its early stages — no public fund size has been confirmed in the available claims.

Network

Vanessa's most concrete named relationship is Mercedes Bent, her co-founder at Premise VC. Her eight years at NEA connected her broadly to the consumer and enterprise venture community on the West Coast. She has also engaged with the All Raise community as a VC mentor.

Mercedes Bent· Co-founder, Premise VC

How they likely show up

Eight-year tenure at NEA rising from Partner to Senior Partner → she thinks in long investment cycles, not quick flips; patient with company building.
Moved from hands-on product (speech recognition, gaming) into VC → likely evaluates founders through a product and user lens before a financial one.
Active TechCrunch and LinkedIn author on founder advice, SaaS pricing, and VC dynamics → comfortable being a visible voice; probably appreciates when counterparts come in with a specific POV of their own.
Founded and sold a mobile gaming startup before entering VC → first-hand founder experience shapes how she reads founder pitches and founder risk tolerance.
Co-founded Premise rather than joining an existing firm → high agency, willing to take on institution-building risk at a stage where most senior VCs would seek a safer landing.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific TechCrunch piece or LinkedIn post she has written — she publishes with regularity and will notice if you have actually read her work.
→ Come with a consumer or B2B2C thesis of your own — she invests in Consumer Tech and Consumer Enablement Tech and engages better with people who have a sharp point of view on where consumers are heading.
→ Ask about the operator-to-VC transition specifically — she has written about it and spoken on it at length; it is clearly a formative part of how she thinks about herself.
→ Don't treat Premise as 'NEA lite' — she built something new by design, and the distinction matters to her.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Premise launch — she left NEA after eight years to co-found her own fund with Mercedes Bent in 2025, a deliberate bet that consumer and B2B2C deserves a dedicated early-stage vehicle right now.
Reference her Xbox Kinect work — she led speech recognition experience at Microsoft at a time when voice interfaces were genuinely new; it's an unusual operator credential that predates most VC consumer-AI enthusiasm by a decade.
She spoke at HumanX in 2026 on consumer tech and AI — use that as a specific entry point to ask what she took away from the conference and how it shaped her current investment lens.

Discovery questions

You came into VC from product — when you're evaluating a technical founder today, what operator signal matters most to you that a purely finance-trained investor would miss?
Premise is specifically focused on Consumer Enablement Tech (B2B2C) alongside straight B2C — how do you think about the difference in what it takes to win in those two motions at the pre-seed stage?
You've written about SaaS pricing and AI impact on consumer tech — where do you think the consumer AI wave is still underestimated, versus where you're already seeing too much noise?

Avoid

Don't pitch her on enterprise SaaS or deep infrastructure plays — Premise is explicitly a consumer and B2B2C fund, and bringing B2B enterprise assumptions into the conversation signals you haven't done the basic homework.

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