Our Team
Paul Matteucci
Founder
Paul’s most basic professional motivation is to mentor start-up teams to create sustainable economic opportunity for employees and their families. Since 1990, he has helped several generations of entrepreneurs learn how to manage exponential growth in economic booms and to survive and sometimes flourish during the inevitable difficult times. In fact, he notes, the best entrepreneurs learn to use hard times as a source for innovation, and as impetus for creating cultures that are accountable, cash-efficient and focused.
He began his career working in information technology start-ups in Silicon Valley only a few miles from where he grew up. From there he advised companies and venture capital firms, including Accel, Redpoint and Sutter Hill before joining US Venture Partners full-time. In 19 years at USVP, Paul led or co-led investments in Swoop, PlaceIQ, 3Ware (sold to AMCC), Trovix (sold to Monster), and others. He has also served on the board of Homestead (sold to Intuit).
Prior to USVP, Paul was CEO of HearMe, taking that company public in 1998. His two decades of operating experience include 8 years with Adaptec, where he was Vice President and General Manager of the SCSI storage and connectivity division. He led the business to over a quarter billion in revenues, before turning it over to a team he hired and mentored.
In 2009, Paul started FoodCrunch an advisory organization focused on helping entrepreneurs change the food system while feeding and preserving the planet, and mitigating the negative effects of diet on health. Paul is an Angel Investor in Impossible Foods, Wine for the World and Fra’ Mani. He also cofounded FoodSystem6, a non-profit food system start-up accelerator and First Course Capital an early stage food and agriculture investor. He is a frequent university lecturer and writer on topics related to sustainable food systems and venture capital investing.
Paul earned an MBA from Stanford University, an MA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins and a BA from the University of the Pacific. He is also an accomplished and passionate home cook, serviceable fly fisherman and proud father and husband.
Advisors
Dana Gunders
Dana Gunders serves as ReFED’s Executive Director. Dana is a national expert and one of the first to bring to light just how much food is wasted across the country. For almost a decade, she was a Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She then launched Next Course, LLC to strategically advise on the topic. Some of her career highlights include authoring the landmark Wasted report and Waste Free Kitchen Handbook, launching the Save the Food campaign, testifying in Congress, consulting to Google, appearing on John Oliver, and perhaps most importantly, being a founding Board Member of ReFED.
Peter Herz
Peter is a General Partner of 1st Course Capital, an early stage venture fund focused on innovation in food and agriculture. Prior to 1CC, he co-founded Food System 6, a 501(c)(3) non-profit accelerator working with entrepreneurs building innovations that improve the environmental, physical and social health of the food system. Previously, he served as CEO of irisnote, a SaaS based provider to scientists to manage their research work. Peter was also interim President of the biological simulation company Entelos and founding CEO of 3ware, a revolutionary data storage company sold to AMCC. Peter has broad international experience including a startup in Munich, Germany and managing sales and partnerships in both Europe and Asia.
Ken Kaplan
Ken is Founding Partner at Healthy Community Ventures (HCV). HCV is a consulting collaborative that integrates health system design thinking with innovative financial strategies to sustain communities through short-term disruptions and for long-term resilience.
Ken became a designer architect after an earlier career as a psychiatric social worker. With this background, he's formed a unique perspective on how systems and people work and interact — and a design-based approach to tackling systemic, societal problems. He gained an inside view of health-care delivery during his 10 years as a clinical social worker. Since becoming a designer, he has devoted much of his time to health systems consulting and research at Columbia, Harvard, and MIT, most recently as a strategic Senior Health System Advisor advisor to the MIT Sloan Initiative for Health Systems Innovation and to a DoD-funded analysis of the military behavioral health system.
At MIT, he co-led the New Models for Health Initiative, collaborating with leaders and clinicians across a wide range of health care organizations and developing design-based projects addressing stroke, childhood obesity, and behavioral health treatment systems. Previously, Ken was a Principal Research Scientist in the MIT Department of Architecture and Planning, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, where he was Co-Principal Investigator for the DoD-funded Surgical Room of the Future Project, and led a study investigating technology transfer from DOD to civilian healthcare. Ken has held professorships at the graduate architecture schools of Columbia University and Harvard University, led design research at MIT, and lectured in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He received his MS in psychiatric social work from New York University and an MS in architecture and an MS in historic preservation from Columbia University.