Dana Settle

Who they are

Dana Settle is Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Greycroft — co-founded the firm in 2006 with Alan Patricof and Ian Sigalow and sits on the board of Stability AI.

Person

Dana joined Greycroft at its founding in 2006, when the mission was explicitly to back internet companies outside Silicon Valley — New York and Los Angeles as the thesis, not the coast. She studied Finance and International Studies at the University of Washington, then took the canonical path through Harvard Business School before cutting her teeth in Media & Communications investment banking at Lehman Brothers. From there she moved into operating roles — international business development at McCaw Cellular Communications — then into venture as a Partner at Mayfield and VSP Capital before co-founding Greycroft with Alan Patricof and Ian Sigalow. The through-line is a consistent bet on consumer and technology at the intersection of capital and operators: banking taught deal mechanics, telecom taught distribution, VC at Mayfield taught portfolio craft. She's a founding member of All Raise, the female mentorship collective, and of Baby2Baby, a non-profit for children living in poverty. She writes occasionally at TechCrunch on venture capital and the LA tech ecosystem, and turns up regularly on the conference circuit — Stanford's NVCA Venture Capital Symposium, Milken Institute Global Conference (2023 and 2024), Fortune Brainstorm Tech — making her views on AI and consumer investing unusually public for a firm-level GP.

Company

The most recent signal: in April 2026 Greycroft participated in the acquisition of Vultron by pWin.ai — a deal in the AI-adjacent enterprise space consistent with the firm's tilt toward production-grade AI. That follows a major capital moment in 2023, when Greycroft closed over $1 billion across two new funds — Greycroft Partners VII and Greycroft Growth IV — pushing total capital raised since inception past $3 billion. In August 2024 the firm led an $80 million Series A for Contextual AI, which builds enterprise retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) infrastructure, signaling a deliberate move into deep AI infrastructure alongside its consumer heritage. Greycroft operates from New York City with additional offices in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, and backs companies from seed through growth.

Market

Greycroft occupies an unusual position in U.S. venture: one of the few mainstream firms that treats consumer brands and deep AI infrastructure as co-equal focus areas under one roof, rather than running separate vehicles. Its historical portfolio — Bumble, Bird, Scopely — sits across social, mobility, and gaming, while newer bets like Contextual AI and Stability AI push into generative AI infrastructure. The firm competes for deals against multi-stage platforms (Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer) and consumer-specialist funds, but its explicit New York / Los Angeles roots have historically given it differentiated access in coastal markets outside the Bay Area.

Network

Dana's closest professional anchors are her two co-founders: Ian Sigalow, who remains Managing Partner, and Alan Patricof, Greycroft's founder emeritus. Her board relationships extend well beyond the portfolio — she sits on the board of IMAX Corporation and the board of Stability AI, and at Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2025 she shared a panel with David Krane of GV to discuss where the AI boom stands.

Ian Sigalow· Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Greycroft
Alan Patricof· Co-Founder (Founder Emeritus), Greycroft
David Krane· Managing Partner, GV

How they likely show up

Long tenure at Greycroft since founding in 2006 → thinks in fund cycles and decade-long company arcs, not short-term deal flow.
Moved from investment banking (Lehman Brothers) → operating (McCaw Cellular) → venture (Mayfield, VSP Capital) before co-founding → brings both capital mechanics and operator empathy to portfolio companies.
Founding member of All Raise and Baby2Baby alongside a full GP role → high capacity for parallel institutional commitments; doesn't treat side projects as peripheral.
Regular presence at Milken, Stanford NVCA, Fortune Brainstorm Tech, and CNBC events → comfortable on stage, likely responds well to direct, substantive conversation rather than small talk.
Possible — TechCrunch contributor with an 'occasional' writing signal → public voice is selective and conference-driven more than content-driven; she probably values depth over volume.

Conversation tips

→ Reference the Contextual AI Series A or the Stability AI board seat specifically — she has moved deliberately into AI infrastructure, and that's where her current attention sits.
→ Ask about the LA tech ecosystem angle — she's been on the record about it since Greycroft's founding thesis and has done multiple podcast episodes on it; it's a point of genuine conviction, not talking-point territory.
→ Don't expect a long warm-up; she presents at high-stakes venues (Milken, Fortune) and is used to making a point efficiently — match that register.
→ Mention All Raise or Baby2Baby only if you have something substantive to say — she's a founder of both, so generic acknowledgment won't land as well as a specific question.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Contextual AI Series A — Greycroft led an $80 million round in August 2024 for an enterprise RAG infrastructure company, a sharp pivot from the consumer-brand deals the firm made its name on; ask how she's thinking about the consumer-to-infrastructure shift.
Reference the Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2025 panel with GV's David Krane on where the AI boom really stands — she's publicly on the record with a view, and opening there signals you followed the conversation, not just the bio.
Bring up the Greycroft 2006 founding thesis — investing outside Silicon Valley in New York and LA when that was genuinely contrarian — and ask how that original geographic bet looks now that LA has become a legitimate tech hub.

Discovery questions

Greycroft backed both Bumble and Stability AI — consumer brand and generative AI infrastructure. How do those two investment theses actually inform each other inside the firm, or do they run as parallel tracks?
You led the Contextual AI Series A into enterprise RAG in 2024 — how are you thinking about where the AI infrastructure stack commoditizes versus where durable margin lives for portfolio companies?
Greycroft's 2023 close put total capital past $3 billion — at that scale, how does your sourcing thesis in LA and New York change, if at all, compared to the early fund days?

Avoid

Don't pitch or frame the conversation around Silicon Valley norms — Greycroft was founded explicitly as a non-Bay Area firm and Dana has spent nearly two decades reinforcing that distinction.

Make it yours