Howard Leibman's path is unusual for a venture investor: before investing, he helped guide HeartWare from an early venture-backed stage to global market leadership, and he thinks about investing through the lens of his electrical engineering training, describing venture as needing conviction in ambiguity much like fuzzy logic. He's also known for building close, long-term relationships with founders—having worked with the teams behind Oneflare, DesignCrowd, SiteMinder, Rezdy, Shippit, and Deputy from their earliest days—and for a disciplined approach to valuations, once noting that his portfolio held at an average of 8.4x ARR while many peers were marking much higher.
About their Fund
EVP is known for high founder affinity, ranking #2 in Astral Ventures' anonymous VC Leaderboard among ANZ funds and ahead of many larger names, and for being a low-profile, relationship-driven firm led by Howard Leibman, known as the founder whisperer, who takes an active, hands-on approach by sitting on boards like Practice Ignition and Deputy and building concentrated portfolios rather than spreading bets across many companies. The fund now focuses specifically on early-stage AI-first software companies building for global scale, backing serious software businesses at the Series A stage using criteria like economic quality, earned founder market fit, and compounding advantage, while also offering structured support such as executive hiring through resources like Talent_OS.
















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