Underrepresented founders, apply for Include office hours with Lerer and Norwest Venture Partners

TechCrunch Include Office Hours are happening this July!  In New York, Taylor Green from Lerer Ventures and in San Francisco, Sergio Monsalve and Ed Yip of Norwest Venture Partners will join TechCrunch to provide valuable advice and feedback to startups.

Launched in 2014, Include is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to take their startups to the next level.

The Office Hours program is part of that effort. Once monthly, TechCrunch works with VC partners to provide mentorship to early-stage companies. To be considered for a meeting in our June session with Norwest in San Francisco or Lerer in New York City, fill out the application here by Tuesday, July 12th at noon PT.

Underrepresented groups in tech include, but are not limited to, Black, Latino, Native American, LGBT and female founders. Preference will be given to teams that can meet in person. Startups should at least be at the prototype stage.

Let’s learn more about our co-hosts.

Taylor Greene is a Partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Previously, Taylor ran business development and served on the Board of Directors at Altruik (acquired by Searchdex). Prior to Altruik, he was an Associate at DFJ Gotham Ventures and a business development consultant for several early stage startups. Taylor has also held operating and finance roles at Time Warner and at The Synapse Group, an integrated marketing firm acquired by Time Warner. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Columbia Business School.

Sergio Monsalve is a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, focusing on early stage investments in marketplaces, mobile applications, on-demand applications, consumer finance, and educational technologies. His current investments and board seats include Adaptive Insights (SaaS), Motif Investing (financial technology), Rafter (education technology), SketchDeck (marketplace), Udemy (marketplace), and ZIRX (mobile on on-demand). He previously was on the board of The DealMap (acquired by Google), myYearbook (Nasdaq: MEET), and StarCite (acquired by The Active Network). He also served as a board observer at InsightsOne (acquired by Apigee) and Lending Club (Nasdaq: LC).
 
Ed Yip is a vice president at Norwest Venture Partners, focusing on early to late-stage venture investments in consumer Internet with a specific emphasis on e-commerce, consumer marketplaces, ad tech and mobile investments. Ed was involved in Norwest’s investments in ModCloth, The Echo Nest (acquired by Spotify) Madison Reed, IFTTT, Minted, Hobnob, and Second Measure.

Apply to meet with Taylor, Sergio or Ed here!