Cathy Gao

Partner at Sapphire Ventures

๐Ÿ“ San Francisco, California, United States๐Ÿ”„ Updated September 2026๐Ÿ’ผ 18 investments๐Ÿ“… 9 years investing๐Ÿ—“ Last invested Aug 2025๐• @upgrade_to_unlock
VC๐ŸŒ United States
18
Total investments
3
Early stage
8
Mid stage
4
Late stage
9y
Years active

Portfolio

16 investments ยท sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Board Member
Aug 2025
Blue J is the leading AI-powered tax research solution, delivering defensible tax answers in secondsโ€”all backed by a rigorously curated content library. Founded in 2015, Blue J is trusted by thousands of organizations, including Big Four firms and Fortune 100 companies. With over 8 million tax questions answered to date, Blue J empowers tax professionals to spend less time researching and more time applying their judgment where it matters most.
Board Member
Aug 2024
Fixing housing and healthcare with agentic AI to improve how we live.
Investor
Jan 2024
At Verse, were building software that enables hospital-quality care at home. Were freshly funded by top healthcare and technology investors, including Y Combinator, Abstract Ventures, Josh Buckley and Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator). Were growing our team aggressively across every department. If youre interested in working on software that changes how healthcare is delivered, please reach out!
Investor
Apr 2023
At BetterUp, weโ€™re bringing the power of human transformation to individuals and workforces everywhere. Our mission? To help people everywhere pursue their lives with greater clarity, purpose, and passion. The BetterUp experience brings together world-class coaching, AI technology, and behavioral science experts to deliver change at scale โ€” improving personal and organizational resilience, adaptability, well-being, and productivity. The results? Individual transformation meets organizational growth. Our proven effectiveness creates positive change for your business and your people. Using our proprietary algorithm and research, we create hyper-personalized experiences that motivate and inspire your people. Watch your organization transform with real-time data analytics and unparalleled human insights that create critical awareness into your workforce and demonstrate measurable results across 25 key leadership dimensions. Interested in joining our team? See open positions: https://www.betterup.com/about-us/careers
Investor
Jan 2022
CaptivateIQ offers the smartest, most flexible way to automate sales commissions. Our innovative platform helps companies automate the administration, calculation, reporting, analysis, and management of even the most complex, variable-based commission plans. It is the only sales commission platform that can centralize and enrich data from disparate data sources into one powerful platform while also providing unbeatable flexibility and scalability to meet the needs of your organization. Leading companies such as Shutterstock, Gong, and Figma rely on CaptivateIQ for their sales commissions process to drive faster close times, reduce costly payout errors, and maximize sales performance.
Investor
Dec 2021
We believe in a world where all the friction that gets in the way of hiring is replaced by conversations โ€” freeing people up to spend time with people, not software. Our conversational recruiting software is built to automate the tasks hiring teams dont have time for โ€” like screening, interview scheduling, and onboarding โ€” to save hours of time and take candidates from hello to hired faster than ever. Weve helped thousands of employers build world class hiring experiences, like Unilever, Medtronic, Nestle, General Motors, FedEx, and Lowes. And weโ€™ve been honored to win several awards, including HR Executive Top Product, Brandon Hall Groupโ€™s Gold Award for Best Advance in AI for Business Impact, and one of Forbesโ€™ Top 500 Startups to Work For. Please note: Paradox will never ask you for your credit card or bank account information in connection with our recruitment process. If anyone contacts you requesting such information, please email us at info@paradox.ai or go to https://www.paradox.ai/legal/fraud for more information.
Investor
Nov 2021
Sword is building the future of healthcare through AI Care, a field we pioneered that brings together Artificial Intelligence and Clinical Experts to tackle healthcareโ€™s biggest bottlenecks - access, outcomes, and cost. The result is a world where clinicians are able to focus on what they do best - handling nuance, providing empathy, and delivering the human touch -, while AI focuses on delivering hyper-personalized treatment programs, ensuring scalability, and being available 24/7 so that healthcare meets the needs of the patient, not the other way around. Our platform spans the full continuum of care, from predicting and preventing pain, to treating physical and mental health, and optimizing healthcare operations. We are trusted by over 2,000 organizations globally, across employers, health plans, and governments, having helped our clients generate over $1 billion in healthcare savings, largely by avoiding unnecessary procedures, such as surgeries, imaging, ER visits, and others. Weโ€™re backed by some of the worldโ€™s most seasoned investors, such as Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Founders Fund and others, and currently valued at $4B. We believe in - and are building toward - a world where AI Care is within armโ€™s reach of every human. If this mission inspires you, join us in building that future: https://swordhealth.com/company/careers.
Board Observer
Sep 2021
Gem is the only AI-first all-in-one recruiting platform. It brings together your ATS, CRM, sourcing, scheduling, and analytics โ€” plus 650+ million profiles to source from โ€” with AI built into every workflow. By eliminating the headaches of juggling multiple tools, Gem helps customers boost recruiter productivity by up to 5x while saving 30-50% on technology costs. Over 1,000 organizations โ€” from startups to industry leaders like Zillow, DoorDash, and Asana โ€” trust Gem to fuel their growth. With an industry-leading 4.8/5 rating on G2, Gem is the platform recruiters actually love to use.
Board Member
Jul 2021
Goodbye Churn, Hello Growth! Early Warning System to predict churn, get visibility to retain customers, prioritize accounts to increase upsells, and grow revenue With the most up to date data, recommendations for action & collaboration across the customer journey, teams can proactively deliver an amazing customer experience
Board Member
Jul 2021
Agentic AI for Go-To-Market Teams. Leads, enrichment, outreach, inbox, calendar, notes โ€” all automated. Jeeva is the AI platform that handles your entire GTM workflow so your team focuses on what actually closes deals: conversations. ๐—ช๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜ ๐˜„๐—ฒ ๐—ฎ๐˜‚๐˜๐—ผ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฒ: โ†’ AI Lead Generation โ€” Find ideal prospects automatically โ†’ Waterfall Enrichment โ€” 50+ data points from 100+ sources โ†’ Multi-Channel Outreach โ€” Email & More, personalized at scale โ†’ AI Inbox โ€” Smart replies, auto-prioritization, follow-up handling โ†’ AI Meeting Prep โ€” Pre-call briefs + post-call notes ๐—ข๐—ป๐—ฒ ๐—ฝ๐—น๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ณ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—บ. Complete sales w๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ธ๐—ณ๐—น๐—ผ๐˜„. ๐—ญ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ผ ๐—ฏ๐˜‚๐˜€๐˜†๐˜„๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ธ. We dont replace your reps, we supercharge them. Start free at jeeva.ai
Board Member
Mar 2021
SafeGraph is a data company. Thats it - thats all we do. We predict the past. SafeGraphs mission is to democratize access to data. SafeGraphs five year goal is to be THE source for accurate data about every physical place in the world. SafeGraph builds truth sets for machine learning, deep learning, and AI. SafeGraph is unlocking the worlds most powerful data so that machines and humans can answer societys toughest questions.
Investor
Dec 2020
Gorgias is the Conversational AI platform for ecommerce that drives sales and resolves support inquiries. Trusted by over 15,000 ecommerce brands, Gorgias supports growing independent shops to globally recognizable brands. Built for Shopify and powered by advanced ecommerce integrations, Gorgiass conversational AI understands your brand, tools, policies, and customers to drive personalized, 1-to-1 conversations โ€” from editing orders and initiating returns to making product recommendations. Gorgias, where every customer interaction feels personal, support becomes sales, and conversations shape success.
Board Observer
Nov 2020
Medables mission is to get effective therapies to patients faster. We provide an end-to-end, global cloud platform with a flexible suite of tools that allows sponsors, patients, providers & CROs to work together as a team in clinical trials. Our solutions enable more efficient clinical research, more effective healthcare delivery, and more accurate precision and predictive medicine. Our vision is to accelerate the path to human discovery and medical cures. We are passionate about driving innovation and empowering consumers. We are proactive, collaborative, self-motivated learners, committed, bold and tenacious. We are dedicated to making this world a healthier place.
Board Observer
Jun 2020
UJET leads the way in AI-powered contact center innovation, delivering a future-proof, cloud platform that redefines the customer experience with cutting-edge AI, true multimodality, and a mobile-first approach. We infuse AI across every aspect of your customer journey and contact center operations, to drive automation and efficiency. UJETs AI solutions empower agents, optimize customer journeys, and transform contact center operations for elevated experiences and actionable insights. Built on a cloud-native architecture with a unique CRM-first approach, UJET ensures unmatched security, scalability, and prioritized data insights (without storing PII). Designed for effortless use, UJET partners with businesses to deliver exceptional interactions, smarter decision-making, and accelerated growth in the AI-driven world.
Investor
Nov 2019
Moveworks unifies every business system with natural language, giving employees one place to go to find information, automate tasks, and be more productive, increasing employee efficiency and satisfaction by streamlining everyday work. Powered by a pioneering agentic AI infrastructure that leverages the worldโ€™s most advanced LLMs and our proprietary technology, Moveworks understands employee requests, devises intelligent plans to achieve them, and executes actions to get things done across application boundaries in over 100 languages. More than 350 leading brands like Toyota, GitHub, Marriott, Snowflake, Unity, Databricks, Broadcom, Hearst, and Palo Alto Networks trust Moveworks to drive meaningful and lasting AI transformation. Learn more at moveworks.com.
Show all 16 investments โ†“
Experience ยท 20 entries
All (20)
Investments (18)
Board (9)
2025
Board Member
Aug 2025
Blue J is the leading AI-powered tax research solution, delivering defensible tax answers in secondsโ€”all backed by a rigorously curated content library. Founded in 2015, Blue J is trusted by thousands of organizations, including Big Four firms and Fortune 100 companies. With over 8 million tax questions answered to date, Blue J empowers tax professionals to spend less time researching and more time applying their judgment where it matters most.
2024
Board Member
Aug 2024
Fixing housing and healthcare with agentic AI to improve how we live.
Investor
Jan 2024
At Verse, were building software that enables hospital-quality care at home. Were freshly funded by top healthcare and technology investors, including Y Combinator, Abstract Ventures, Josh Buckley and Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator). Were growing our team aggressively across every department. If youre interested in working on software that changes how healthcare is delivered, please reach out!
2023
Board Member
Apr 2023
Culture Amp is the worldโ€™s leading employee experience platform, revolutionizing how 25 million employees across more than 6,500 companies create a better world of work. Culture Amp empowers companies of all sizes and industries to transform employee engagement, drive performance management, and develop high-performing teams. Powered by people science and the most comprehensive employee dataset in the world, the most innovative companies including Canva, On, Asana, Dolby, McDonalds and Nasdaq depend on Culture Amp every day. Culture Amp is backed by leading capital venture funds and has offices in the US, UK, Germany and Australia. Culture Amp has been recognized as one of the worldโ€™s top private cloud companies by Forbes and most innovative companies by Fast Company. For more information visit cultureamp.com.
Investor
Apr 2023
At BetterUp, weโ€™re bringing the power of human transformation to individuals and workforces everywhere. Our mission? To help people everywhere pursue their lives with greater clarity, purpose, and passion. The BetterUp experience brings together world-class coaching, AI technology, and behavioral science experts to deliver change at scale โ€” improving personal and organizational resilience, adaptability, well-being, and productivity. The results? Individual transformation meets organizational growth. Our proven effectiveness creates positive change for your business and your people. Using our proprietary algorithm and research, we create hyper-personalized experiences that motivate and inspire your people. Watch your organization transform with real-time data analytics and unparalleled human insights that create critical awareness into your workforce and demonstrate measurable results across 25 key leadership dimensions. Interested in joining our team? See open positions: https://www.betterup.com/about-us/careers
Show all 20 entries โ†“
Investment activity
2017โ€“2025 ยท 18 investments
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