Ridge Team

Yousuf is a Partner at Ridge Ventures.  Having held many operational roles in his previous positions, he’s uniquely qualified to not only grow Ridge’s portfolio, but more importantly to support founders through the vantage point of deep start-up experience. He currently serves as board director for Ridge-backed Archera, Cerby, Chisel Labs, Lightyear, Rafay, and Rewind.

Prior to joining Ridge, Yousuf was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere, the CIO and Vice President of Customer Success at cloud-based AI platform Moveworks, as well as CIO of Pure Storage and Qualys. He has been an advisor to early-stage companies such as Zoom, Productiv and Material Security as well as an active member of the CIO community.

He holds a BSc in Business Management from King’s College London.

Brendan focuses on helping founders build large, generational, revenue-driven companies. He led Ridge’s investment in Loop Returns. He currently serves as board director or observer at Grabango, Loop Returns and Sama.

Prior to joining Ridge, Brendan worked with several early-stage venture funds including Wing and Hone Capital, as well as companies and accelerators including Passport, Shift, Batch, AngelPad, Techstars, and others.

Previously, Brendan was also a Director at Greylock, founding a program to build data and software systems to find and evaluate new investments. He was the second employee at AngelList, overseeing 8000 pitches and helping more than 300 startups raise funding.

His background also includes professional assignments with Practica Foundation as Ethiopian Country Director, which designs and distributes low cost water and energy products in African markets, as well as serving as Director of Engineers Without Borders Canada.

He holds a BASc in Materials Engineering from University of British Columbia, MPhil from University of Cambridge, and an MBA from University of Oxford.

Alexander Rosen is Managing Partner and co-founder of Ridge Ventures. He focuses on investing in companies developing software that radically changes end-user experiences. Alex currently serves as board director or observer at Bestomer (stealth), Eskalera (future workplace platform), Habu (privacy-safe data sharing), Kazoo (employee engagement platform), Minted (design-driven e-commerce), Ontic (protective intelligence platform), Retail Zipline (communication platform), SafeGraph (geolocation data), and UpLift (payment management for travel).  He also led Ridge Ventures’ investments in multiple companies including InCountry, Horizon3.ai, and MaintainX.

Alex is a recognized industry leader and serves as Chair of the Stanford GSB Venture Fund Group and on the GSB Trust Board.

Prior to co-founding Ridge, he was a Partner at Sprout Group, where he was head of the Internet and Software group.

His prior investments include Blue Box (acquired by IBM), Braze (IPO), Fastly (IPO), Flowdock (acquired by Rally), MyNewPlace (acquired by RealPage), mySimon (acquired by CNET), Krux (acquired by Salesforce.com), MindMeld (acquired by Cisco), SideStep (acquired by Kayak), Vidible (acquired by Verizon/Oath), and WatchGuard (acquired by Vector).  Alex started his venture capital career as an associate with General Atlantic Partners, served as an advisor to Vector Capital, and developed software for Telcordia and AT&T Bell Labs early in his professional life.

He holds BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from MIT and an MBA from Stanford University.

He lives in San Francisco with his wife and twin daughters.