Oana Olteanu, a former Scale Venture Partners investor and SignalFire partner, told Business Insider that a green card was the reason she entered venture capital. After backing startups such as Poolside and MaintainX before they became multibillion-dollar companies, she has now launched Motive Force, a new venture capital firm that will invest in early-stage AI, enterprise software and robotics startups.
Her move comes as venture capital investors face a challenging environment. Large investment firms dominate many of the biggest funding rounds, while institutional investors increasingly direct money toward firms with long track records and access to high-profile deals. New venture funds often struggle to attract capital in such conditions.
Despite those obstacles, Olteanu believes the current market creates opportunities for smaller investors willing to spend time finding founders before competitors discover them. “Early when it’s not obvious” is how she describes the stage at which she prefers to invest. She also seeks founders “before they even think of raising” a formal funding round, reported Business Insider.
Why did Olteanu turn down a job at Poolside?
One of Olteanu’s most successful investments began when artificial intelligence startup Poolside tried to recruit her. At the time, Poolside founder Eiso Kant was impressed by her understanding of machine learning and her ability to connect with highly skilled engineers, reported Business Insider. Kant invited her to leave venture capital and join the company’s efforts to build its technical team.
According to Business Insider, Olteanu declined the offer because she wanted to continue investing in startups rather than move into an operating role. Instead, Kant offered her another opportunity, which is the chance to invest personally in the company.
She wrote a small personal check into Poolside. The startup has since become one of the most valuable AI companies in the sector, reaching a reported valuation of $12 billion, reported Business Insider. The investment now stands as one of the strongest examples of her ability to identify promising companies at an early stage.
Poolside is not the only successful company in her track record. Olteanu backed MaintainX, software that helps industrial businesses monitor and maintain equipment. The company later achieved a valuation of about $2.5 billion, reported Business Insider.
She also invested early in Inngest, whose software helps development teams manage and complete complex multi-step software processes. The startup later attracted backing from major investors including Altimeter Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Those investments helped establish her reputation as an investor capable of identifying high-potential technology startups before they attract widespread attention.
Who is Oana Olteanu?
Olteanu’s personal journey differs from the traditional path followed by many venture capital investors. She grew up in rural Romania in a household without a computer. At age 18, she entered a NASA competition to design a space station and won the grand prize. The victory earned her first airplane trip and brought her to the NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Bay Area, reported Business Insider.
Afterward, she moved to Germany, where she studied computer science while working three jobs to support herself. Financial pressures became so severe that she sought special permission from German authorities to work more hours than the standard limit allowed for students.
Her path back to California came through enterprise software giant SAP, which offered her a full-time position and the visa support needed to relocate.
An unexpected housing decision exposed her to Silicon Valley’s wealth and influence. In 2015, unaware of local geography, she rented a room through Craigslist in Los Altos Hills, reported Business Insider. Her landlord had been an early engineer at Atari, while one of her neighbors was Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Olteanu, however, drove an aging Kia Rio and felt far removed from the world around her.
At the same time, she became deeply involved in the emerging artificial intelligence community. She attended machine-learning meetups where many participants later became senior figures at leading AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI. During the day, while working at SAP, she collaborated on chatbot projects with customers such as Slack.
Her transition into venture capital happened unexpectedly. Scale Venture Partners sought her technical assessment of BigID, a company that worked closely with SAP. Her analysis impressed the firm’s leadership, who recognized the need for someone with strong technical expertise to evaluate machine-learning startups.
Scale Venture Partners offered her a position, which also provided a route to permanent residency in the United States. “Honestly, that was the magic word,” Olteanu told Business Insider. “I joined VC for a green card,” she added.
She later worked at both Scale Venture Partners and SignalFire before deciding to establish her own fund. “I believe founders deserve a fund to exist like the one I’m designing,” she told Business Insider.
While she says that institutions including Stanford University can help entrepreneurs build networks and gain opportunities, she rejects the idea that pedigree alone predicts success. “A Stanford degree,” she said, “is only a station a train passes through,” rather than proof of where the train will ultimately go.