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Cyan Banister

Cyan Banister

Cyan Banister Contributor Cyan Banister is a partner at Founders Fund, where she invests across sectors and stages with a particular interest in augmented reality, fertility, heavily regulated industries and businesses that help people with basic skills find meaningful work. More posts by this contributor Penn Jillette Turns To FundAnything To Become A Bad Guy Despite Flaws, Ashton As Jobs Is Worth Seeing Alex Hertel Contributor Share on X Alex Hertel is the co-founder of Xperiel.

Cyan Banister is a partner at Founders Fund, where she invests across sectors and stages with a particular interest in augmented reality, fertility, heavily regulated industries and businesses that help people with basic skills find meaningful work.

Prior to joining Founders Fund, Cyan was an active angel investor with a portfolio including Uber, Thumbtack, SpaceX, Postmates, EShares, Affirm and Niantic, creator of Pokémon GO. A self-taught engineer and entrepreneur, Cyan has held a number of technical leadership positions throughout her career. As an early employee at IronPort, which was acquired by Cisco, Cyan oversaw support infrastructure and performance for a global customer base. She has a passion for the arts and is a voracious film, documentary and media consumer.

The Latest from Cyan Banister

We love augmented reality, but let’s fix things that could become big problems

Cyan Banister,  Alex Hertel
Cyan Banister Contributor Cyan Banister is a partner at Founders Fund, where she invests across sectors and stages with a particular interest in augmented reality, fertility, heavily regulated industr

Penn Jillette Turns To FundAnything To Become A Bad Guy

Cyan Banister
Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame is about as nice as they come. And he's super sick of it. So he wrote a movie called "Director's Cut" in which he will no longer be the hero. His role is so ba

Despite Flaws, Ashton As Jobs Is Worth Seeing

Cyan Banister
When Ashton Kutcher was first tapped to play Steve Jobs in the movie Jobs, which opened in theaters today, I was nervous. Mostly for Ashton. In addition to being a friend, I'm also Ashton's fan, an

You May Take Away My Freedom, But I’ll Always Have My Crunchie!

Cyan Banister
On June 14th, 2010, Michael Arrington <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2010/06/14/were-awarding-goatse-security-a-crunchie-award-for-public-service/">awarded a Crunchie</a> to two members of Goatse Se

The Gift Of Online Privacy

Cyan Banister
Every month I see several birth announcements on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I know exactly what moment the baby was born, what they looked like in sonogram photos, what their first food was, the

Mike Maples Gets On Board Blueseed’s Sea Platform

Cyan Banister
I'm going to go out on a limb here, but my guess is if you went around and asked people in the startup community what they thought about <a target="_blank" href="http://www.crunchbase.com/person/mike-

Creators of SuicideGirls.com Launch Let’s Date

Cyan Banister
There are a lot of dating application and website choices out there, but lets face it, some of them are kind of creepy. I'm not dating, but I have a lot of friends and loved ones that are and I watch

Finding Inspiration In The Aurora Tragedy, By Helping Victims Through HopeMob

Cyan Banister
I've gone through various stages of "connectedness" in my life. We all have. Some of you are so young that you've never known anything else and some of you remember the days when you only knew the loc

Profitable San Francisco Financial Company Launches New Form Of Payment [TCTV]

Cyan Banister
San Francisco has had an awesome few weeks of 75th anniversary celebrations. The Golden Gate bridge celebration was pretty obvious, as there was a lot of fanfare with fireworks etc., but another celeb

What’s Big, Blue, Hopes To Save Our Planet And Is Not Facebook?

Cyan Banister
There have been a lot of complaints voiced over the last couple of years from people who wish entrepreneurs would address the world's "real problems" or do "something bigger" rather than create "me to

Speaking Of… Pink with Jesse Draper (TCTV)

Cyan Banister
This week's guest on Speaking Of is no stranger to the world of television. She's <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jesse-draper">Jesse Draper,</a> creator and host of online talk show, <a hre

The Real Pirates Of Silicon Valley?

Cyan Banister
<a href="http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/11/03/blueseed-accelerator-finds-international-waters-the-answer-to-us-visa-problems">ArcticStartup</a> recently broke the news about an ambitious seasteadin

Time to rethink every website in the world

Cyan Banister
I tried out Kindle Cloud Reader and holy shit, I feel like Mosaic was just invented and now we have tags. (Do some of our readers even know what Mosaic is these days? Well, it was really cool at the

Oren Jacob, CTO of Pixar, joins August Capital as EIR

Cyan Banister
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-305106" title="hornick" src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/hornick.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="212" /><a href="http://www.crunchb

Speaking of… sex toys with Ethan Imboden from Jimmyjane [TCTV]

Cyan Banister
<img src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/ethanimboden.jpg?w=215" alt="" title="ethanimboden" class="size-medium wp-image-298827" />Vibrating sex toys have been around for over a centu

Speaking of… Social Venues with Nic Adler of The Roxy [TCTV]

Cyan Banister
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-266027" title="nicadler" src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/nicadler.jpg?w=205" alt="" width="205" height="300" />We read a lot of news abo

Speaking of… Cindy Morgan, from Original TRON [TCTV]

Cyan Banister
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-264009" title="cindymorgan" src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/cindymorgan.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="235" />My special guest on

Speaking of… Using Your Medium with Reason’s Nick Gillespie (TCTV)

Cyan Banister
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-253482" title="nickgillespie" src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/nickgillespie.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="273" />It is 25 degree

TRON: Legacy movie review (TCTV)

Cyan Banister
<img src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/tron_yellow_v2.jpeg?w=300" alt="" title="TRON_YELLOW_v2" width="300" height="113" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-251283" />Part of the

Speaking Of… Jeff Bridges & Olivia Wilde in TRON Legacy, Part 3 & 4 (TCTV)

Cyan Banister
<img src="http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/jeffbridges-2.png?w=300" alt="" title="JeffBridges 2" width="300" height="168" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-250834" />Greetings progr
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