Eric Paley, Chair

Eric Paley has worked to shape the innovation economy for more than 25 years as both a successful entrepreneur and a leading venture capitalist. As co-founder and Managing Partner of Founder Collective, Paley helped build one of the world’s highest-performing seed-stage venture capital funds. His investment portfolio includes groundbreaking technology companies across diverse sectors such as transportation, media, healthcare, robotics consumer, advanced manufacturing and enterprise software, including Uber, The Trade Desk, Omada Health, Cruise Automation, Whoop, Formlabs and Airtable. Paley served on the Board of Directors of The Trade Desk from its founding until 2023, including as a public director after the company’s IPO in 2016. At Founder Collective, Paley also launched Collective Future, an annual Boston conference bringing together the state's most influential innovators across technology, government, media, cultural and non-profit sectors to collaboratively shape the future of the innovation economy.

Before Founder Collective, Paley founded and led two companies. Most notably, he was CEO of Brontes Technologies, a hard-tech startup which commercialized novel 3D imaging technology spun out of MIT to enable advanced manufacturing in dentistry. Paley continued to lead the company after its acquisition by 3M in 2006.

Paley's industry recognition includes five appearances on the Forbes Midas List of top venture capital investors, reaching as high as #9 overall—making him the world’s highest-ranked seed investor that year. He has also been recognized as a Technology Power Player by the Boston Globe for the past four years and among Boston's Most Influential People by Boston Magazine in 2025.

Paley holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College. He lives in Lexington with his wife, Shirley, and two children. He serves on the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Greater Boston. He and Shirley focus their philanthropic efforts primarily on the alleviation of food insecurity in Massachusetts.