Celebrating Lily Bernicker's promotion to Partner

At Wireframe we often say we’re in the “people flow business” because we anchor our process so strongly on founders. Every business metric investors care about is a by-product of people working effectively together against a clear, common and worthwhile purpose. So, of course, we also believe one of the most important decisions a founder will make is who to add in the early days of their journey. Together they are thought partners, load bearers and culture setters for everyone else to follow.

Paul and I set out to found our firm around that same ethos. Our strategy is predicated on close engagement with our portfolio companies based on earned influence and trust. It also demands that we bring a deep thematic understanding of the specific types of problems to be solved - and businesses to be built – in climate, bio and health. So extending our capacity as a firm always meant that we would have to find uniquely capable investors who were the right fit for this approach.

Fast forward to today, and we’re thrilled to announce the promotion of Lily Bernicker to Partner at Wireframe Ventures. The journey to this milestone for our firm started very organically in the early days of the pandemic. Lily was previously investing for a strong generalist seed firm, but she was personally drawn to focus on climate, health and bio – coincidentally all perfectly aligned with Wireframe’s mission. We built a relationship by Zoom over a year, regularly evaluating interesting opportunities together in our mutual areas of interest. She consistently impressed us with the depth of her understanding of these complex markets, the quality of her industry and investor network and her analytical approach to evaluating young companies. Our conversations felt unusually natural and collaborative from the start. So when the opportunity arose, what we always thought would be such a tough process to find the right person ended up being an obvious and easy decision.

And now - three years after joining us as a Principal - Lily again presented us with an obvious decision. She cares deeply about investing in the health of people & planet. She has already sourced and led a number of exciting investments for Wireframe, in addition to supporting many of our existing portfolio companies in myriad ways. And from day 1 she has demonstrated a long-term orientation about her own career, about contributing to building this firm, and to doing everything she can to help our founders succeed.

We still have so much to build at Wireframe, and we could not be more proud to do that alongside Lily as our Partner.