NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Darwin Ventures, a private equity firm focused on venture capital and based in New York City and San Francisco, today announced that Stephanie Sarka has joined the firm as a Venture Partner. “We are very excited to have Stephanie on-board. She adds enormous strength to our New York City team as we build out our investment presence in consumer brands and online commerce,” said Peter Freudenthal, Managing General Partner. “Stephanie’s unique background, both with growing online businesses and in brick-and-mortar retail and merchandising, and her leadership abilities will help us generate a dominant footprint in the New York City commerce ecosystem.”
“Stephanie is considered an expert in brand development, retail and consumer marketing. Moreover, as a co-founder of Overture (GoTo.com), the company which pioneered Paid Search and was sold to Yahoo for $1.6 billion, she was intimately involved in what can only be described as one of the game changing events in web search and commerce,” said Jay Bhatti, General Partner at Darwin Ventures.
Stephanie Sarka Joins Darwin Ventures as a Venture Partner:
In addition to her position as a Venture Partner with Darwin Ventures, Stephanie is currently the Founder & CEO of a NYC web start-up which intends to radically transform social networking, an Advisor to Wowd in the Silicon Valley, and an Advisor to PinYou in China. She has held Senior level positions at Coach Leatherware, the pre-eminent American accessories brand, as well as having co-founded Overture (GoTo.com). Stephanie is also active in angel investing, philanthropy and public education reform.
She holds a B.A. in quantitative economics from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.
About Darwin Ventures:
Darwin Ventures is a private equity firm that provides accredited investors unique access to investment opportunities that are generally unavailable to most investors. These investments include a diverse group of top-tier venture capital partnership investments as well as selected direct investment opportunities. (www.darwinvc.com)