Bill Coughran

Founder's Coach and Partner at Sequoia Capital

📍 Menlo Park, California, United States🔄 Updated September 2026💼 23 investments📅 26 years investing🗓 Last invested Mar 2020
VC🌍 United States20+ investments
23
Total investments
11
Early stage
2
Mid stage
1
Late stage
26y
Years active

Portfolio

17 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Board Member
Mar 2020
Robust Intelligence is the leader in end-to-end AI risk management, protecting organizations from security, ethical, and operational risks. The company’s platform protects models in real time with AI Firewall and automates testing and compliance across the AI lifecycle through continuous validation. This combined approach enables Robust Intelligence to proactively manage risk for any model type and gives organizations the confidence to unleash the true potential of AI. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global, and trusted by leading companies including ADP, JPMorgan Chase, Expedia, Deloitte, Cisco, and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Board Member
Oct 2019
Lightstep’s reliability platform is the easiest way for developers and SREs to monitor system health, understand changes, respond to incidents, and accelerate release velocity in cloud-native applications.
Board Member
Jan 2019
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Board Member
Jun 2018
LILT is the leading AI solution for enterprise translation. Our stack of Contextual AI, Connector APIs, and Human Adaptive feedback enable global organizations to adopt a true AI translation strategy, focusing on business outcomes instead of outputs. We bring human-powered, technology-assisted translations to global enterprises. We give organizations everything they need to scale their translation programs, go-to-market faster than ever, and improve the global customer experience. Speaking of – with Lilt, innovative, category-defining organizations like Intel, ASICS, WalkMe, and Canva are using AI-powered technology to deliver multilingual, digital customer experiences at scale. Lilt is based in San Francisco with global offices in Berlin, Dublin, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., London, and Argentina, and are backed by Intel Capital, Sequoia, Redpoint, Zetta, and XSeed.
Board Member
Jun 2018
Welcome to the future of networking! Alkira reinvents networking for the cloud era with global unified network infrastructure delivered as-a-service. The Alkira Cloud Networking platform is a solution that offers enterprises a dramatically simplified experience for deploying global, high-speed hybrid and multi-cloud networks connecting users, sites, and clouds with integrated network and security services, end-to-end day-2 operational visibility, advanced controls, and governance. There is no need to procure hardware, deploy complicated do-it-yourself software solutions, or learn cloud networking architectures. Just draw your network on an intuitive digital design canvas, provision it in one click, and start using it in minutes. Alkira Network Cloud is trusted by the global Fortune-100 enterprises, leading system integrators, and managed service providers. The Network. Reinvented for Cloud.™
Board Member
Jun 2017
Vector Launch’s primary mission is to solve complex national security challenges facing the intelligence community, US Department of Defense and other government agencies.
Board Member
Dec 2014
Orbital Insight is the leader in geospatial analytics and location intelligence that helps organizations understand what’s happening on and to the Earth. Orbital Insight uses AI to answer their questions about supply chains, global commodities, geopolitical events, demographics and national security using multiple sources of geospatial data—including satellite images, mobile location, connected cars and other IoT data. Armed with this insight, organizations can anticipate future changes to avoid costly surprises and create new opportunities.
Board Member
Sep 2014
At Docker, we simplify the lives of developers who are making world-changing apps. Docker helps developers bring their ideas to reality by conquering the complexity of app development. We simplify and accelerate workflows with an integrated development pipeline and application components. Actively used by millions of developers around the world, Docker Desktop and Docker Hub provide unmatched simplicity, agility and choice.
Board Member
Apr 2014
VMware Aria Operations for Applications (formerly Tanzu Observability) is the most scalable and advanced unified observability platform for DevOps teams. SREs, developers, and platform operators can accurately measure application and infrastructure performance in their multi-cloud environments and enjoy instant access to shared context to quickly investigate unknown incidents and establish the root cause.
Board Member
Apr 2014
P4-driven, high performance data center fabric with enhanced visibility and control. Switch to Intelligence with Intel Intelligent Fabric (formerly Barefoot Networks).
Board Member
Apr 2014
Our mission is to shape the future of technology to help create a better future for the entire world, that’s the power of Intel Inside. With more ingenuity and creativity inside, our work is at the heart of countless innovations. From major breakthroughs to things that make everyday life better— they’re all powered by Intel technology. With a career at Intel, you can help make the future more wonderful for everyone. • Need help or have a support question? Visit Intel Support: http://ms.spr.ly/6054tmaop .
Board Member
Jun 2013
NEC Advanced Networks provides a critical US base of operations for the company’s product innovations and solutions delivery activities, particularly in the development of Radio Units. These capabilities are a complement to the world-class capabilities that already exist in NEC’s Tokyo HQ. Using the former Blue Danube resources to create a center of innovation and product development helps accommodate the push for more Open RAN 5G solutions built on multi-vendor ecosystems. NEC Advanced Networks will drive developments in the Radio Unit business, at first, with a focus on spectrum optimization and AI/ML-based massive MIMO products. The Open RAN market is growing – and NEC has been involved with nearly every global operator who has deployed. As demand continues to build exponentially, this home base for Open RAN 5G resources in the US helps NEC serve the global market even better. Blue Danube Systems designed next generation wireless solutions for mobile networks and other applications. Its Coherent Massive MIMO solution brings 5G beamforming to today’s networks dramatically increasing network capacity and end user experience. Together with cloud-based software suite utilizing machine learning techniques, our technology enables up to a 10X capacity increase in cellular networks with today’s smartphones. We are currently seeking candidates for positions in hardware and software engineering. Please see the careers page for more information. https://www.necadvancednetworks.com/careers/
Board Member
Mar 2013
In September 2016, SAP acquired Altiscale technology assets and offers them as part of the SAP Big Data portfolio. For news and information about SAP Big Data, please visit the SAP Technology page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/sap-technology Please note the SAP privacy statement for followers: https://www.sap.com/sps --- Altiscale provides the first purpose-built, fully managed Big Data cloud based on Apache Hadoop and Spark. Altiscale’s Big Data-as-a service platform offers instant access to production-ready Big Data analytics, operated by Altiscale, delivering faster time to value and higher reliability than alternative approaches. Altiscale’s founding team has been at the forefront of Big Data, from incubating Hadoop at Yahoo! to operating clusters spanning more than 40,000 nodes. Founded in 2012, Altiscale is backed by leading venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners, and Northgate.
Board Member
Nov 2012
Microsoft acquired Matanautix in December 2015. Metanautix empowers organizations to rapidly capitalize on all data assets instead of waiting for weeks and months. Metanautix delivers immediate insights from disparate data silos without requiring the data to be moved into one centralized system. Our mission is to integrate the data supply chain and enable organizations to transform information assets into better decisions and new products. For more information about the Metanautix acquisition visit: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/12/18/microsoft-acquires-metanautix-to-help-customers-connect-data-for-business-insights/#sm.00000lo4ve6x65f5wyam5ku6v03nx
Board Observer and sometimes Board Member
Aug 2012
Viptela is a fast growing, private company that is disrupting network infrastructure technology that enterprises use to connect their facilities, users and applications. Featured in the Forbes, Wall Street Journal and leading trade-press journals, Viptela has emerged as a clear leader in the multi-billion Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) segment. Over 25 Fortune-500 companies deploy Viptela technology at thousands of sites on six continents, to drastically simplify their WAN infrastructure with over 50% cost-savings. Verizon and Singtel offer managed services, globally, based on Viptela's SD-WAN technology. Viptela’s secure, overlay WAN technology delivers to enterprises the benefit of: • Unified and centralized management of all WAN infrastructure • Reduced WAN infrastructure costs by over 50% • In-depth control & visibility of application performance • Robust-zero trust WAN security • Agility, by reducing network change control from months to days Viptela is backed by Sequoia Capital. A 3-minute video overview is here http://youtu.be/0iW-3tt4LH4
Show all 17 investments ↓
Experience · 24 entries
All (24)
Investments (22)
Founder (2)
Board (22)
2020
Board Member
Mar 2020
Robust Intelligence is the leader in end-to-end AI risk management, protecting organizations from security, ethical, and operational risks. The company’s platform protects models in real time with AI Firewall and automates testing and compliance across the AI lifecycle through continuous validation. This combined approach enables Robust Intelligence to proactively manage risk for any model type and gives organizations the confidence to unleash the true potential of AI. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global, and trusted by leading companies including ADP, JPMorgan Chase, Expedia, Deloitte, Cisco, and the U.S. Department of Defense.
2019
Board Member
Oct 2019
Lightstep’s reliability platform is the easiest way for developers and SREs to monitor system health, understand changes, respond to incidents, and accelerate release velocity in cloud-native applications.
Board Member
Jan 2019
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2018
Board Member
Jun 2018
LILT is the leading AI solution for enterprise translation. Our stack of Contextual AI, Connector APIs, and Human Adaptive feedback enable global organizations to adopt a true AI translation strategy, focusing on business outcomes instead of outputs. We bring human-powered, technology-assisted translations to global enterprises. We give organizations everything they need to scale their translation programs, go-to-market faster than ever, and improve the global customer experience. Speaking of – with Lilt, innovative, category-defining organizations like Intel, ASICS, WalkMe, and Canva are using AI-powered technology to deliver multilingual, digital customer experiences at scale. Lilt is based in San Francisco with global offices in Berlin, Dublin, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., London, and Argentina, and are backed by Intel Capital, Sequoia, Redpoint, Zetta, and XSeed.
Board Member
Jun 2018
Welcome to the future of networking! Alkira reinvents networking for the cloud era with global unified network infrastructure delivered as-a-service. The Alkira Cloud Networking platform is a solution that offers enterprises a dramatically simplified experience for deploying global, high-speed hybrid and multi-cloud networks connecting users, sites, and clouds with integrated network and security services, end-to-end day-2 operational visibility, advanced controls, and governance. There is no need to procure hardware, deploy complicated do-it-yourself software solutions, or learn cloud networking architectures. Just draw your network on an intuitive digital design canvas, provision it in one click, and start using it in minutes. Alkira Network Cloud is trusted by the global Fortune-100 enterprises, leading system integrators, and managed service providers. The Network. Reinvented for Cloud.™
Show all 24 entries ↓
Investment activity
2000–2020 · 23 investments
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