Sarah Cone

In a 2019 interview on BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry’s Masters in Business podcast, the host, Barry Ritholtz, said that she began her career at the venture group Omidyar Network, later worked as an associate at Illuminate Ventures on business-to-business software as a service, and also worked at a nonprofit technology and public policy group; he added that early in her career she had worked at big technology firms such as GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

She recalled that she simply showed up at the Omidyar Network of Pierre OmidyarPierre OmidyarPierre Omidyar is a French-born American entrepreneur and philanthropist, the founder of the online marketplace eBay.Open the full entry, the founder of eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry, and introduced herself, after which Rob Hayes taught her venture capital. In a testimonial on Social Impact Capital’s website, Rob Hayes, a former general partner at First Round, states that she worked for him at Omidyar Network and ranks her among the top 1% of intellects he knows.⁠[1][2]

The early roles listed on her LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry profile include consultant at CTI Consulting from September 2006 to 2010, advising large Japanese multinational corporations on reorganizing their R&D departments; summer associate at the law firm Fenwick & West from June to August 2008; associate at Illuminate Ventures, a venture firm specializing in B2B SaaS, from March 2012 to May 2014; and consultant at i(x) investments from October 2015 to January 2016, helping launch an evergreen impact investing fund founded by Howard W. Buffett and Trevor Neilson.⁠[3]

She founded the venture capital firm Social Impact Capital in 2016 and serves as its founder and managing partner.⁠[4][5]

In the 2019 interview she said that she started her fund because she saw an “incredible arbitrage opportunity” in early-stage impact investing; she described the firm as “a solo GP firm” working with venture partners and advisers, aiming for about 20 percent ownership in each deal, and requiring each portfolio company to track one impact metric tied to running its business. An InvestmentNews podcast describes her path to building the impact venture firm as a 15-year journey.⁠[1][6]

Her LinkedIn profile gives September 2019 as the start of her role as founder and managing partner of Social Impact Capital, and lists board seats at Emitwise (later acquired) from September 2019 to 2025 and at PreAct from 2019 to 2021.⁠[3]

On June 10, 2019 a TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry article on what top venture capitalists look for in women’s fertility startups included her views: she called women’s health “a huge but underserved market,” mainly because of too little investment in research and development; she said that only 7 of the top 25 pharmaceutical companies had women’s health pipelines, averaging fewer than two drugs each, and that women’s health received 0.023% of NIH grants in 2015; and she called women’s health “the next great market opportunity in healthcare,” pointing to later childbearing, growing recognition of differences in women’s pain and the FDA approval of AbbVieAbbVieAbbVie Inc. is a global, research-based biopharmaceutical company headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois; it became an independent, publicly traded company on January 1, 2013, after its separation from Abbott Laboratories.Open the full entry’s endometriosis drug Elagolix. She said Social Impact Capital was interested in companies that create large women’s health and fertility data sets, linking such data sets to personalized medicine, virtual clinical trials and the discovery of new drug targets with AI and machine learning.⁠[7]

On December 20, 2019 Bloomberg published an episode of Barry Ritholtz’s podcast Masters in Business, “Sarah Cone Discusses Disrupting Venture Capital,” about 87 minutes long; the episode description identifies her as founder and managing partner of Social Impact Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm.⁠[8]

On the show she said that the firm would do anything at the seed stage, including pre-seed and seed extensions; that 83 percent of its companies had downstream money from top-tier firms in the Series A; that it currently had a 100 percent “hit rate,” though venture returns take seven to ten years to show; and that it had done a great deal in its first three years. She described her limited partners as a “who’s who of capitalism” without naming them, and said she could not discuss returns. She named the 23andMe23andMe23andMe is a consumer genetics and research brand offering ancestry and health-risk services. It is now operated by 23andMe Research Institute, a nonprofit based in Palo Alto, California.Open the full entry co-founder Linda Avey and Ashby Monk among her advisers and cited the vegan dog food company Wild Earth and the molecular food maker Endless West as portfolio companies; she called the safety app Citizen part of her “anti-portfolio”: she passed on its seed round and said she “turned out to be completely wrong.”⁠[1]

She also described her volunteer work with BUILD.org, which teaches entrepreneurial skills to high school students, and Defy Ventures, which teaches entrepreneurship to former inmates; her advice to recent graduates was not to compromise between what they care about and making money, because they can do both, and to seek mentors who are going to be famous in ten years.⁠[1]

An interview published in Entrepreneur on July 9, 2020 states that Social Impact Capital invests at the seed stage and had invested in 19 businesses, every one of which had raised follow-on capital or exited; portfolio companies included Milk Run, an on-demand marketplace for locally sourced produce, and Judy, a maker of plug-and-play prepper kits. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic three portfolio companies had closed follow-on financings, and some manufacturing companies in the portfolio had made hand sanitizer and face shields and donated them to front-line workers. She said the firm does not invest on social impact alone but in products that are also better on another dimension, typically lower cost, and advised founders to treat healthy unit economics as a key metric at every stage.⁠[9]

A 2022 biography for the “Let’s Talk Impact” program states that Social Impact Capital had secured follow-on financing for all of its portfolio companies, 94% of it led by top-tier venture firms; that she was one of the earliest investors in the zero-carbon fuel company Prometheus Fuels (described there as the first zero-carbon fuel unicorn), an early investor in the social impact unicorn Andela, and the first venture investor in OpenInvest, later acquired by J.P. Morgan; and that other portfolio companies included Totus Medicines, Charm Industrial, Aether Diamonds and Menten AI. She was a board observer at Emitwise and JUDY and formerly sat on the board of PreAct.⁠[4][5]

Her LinkedIn profile states that she has been co-founder and executive chair of Hydron Desalination, based in Fogelsville, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry, since January 2025, describing its business as “Liquid-liquid desalination.” Her X bio calls her a “Produced water cleaner & Exec Chair @ Hydron.”⁠[3][10]

Hydron’s website likewise lists her as co-founder and executive chair, with co-founder Sachin Nair as chief executive; the company treats hypersaline wastewater with a solvent-based method rather than membranes.⁠[11]

Her LinkedIn profile states that she has been co-founder and chief executive officer of Revorion, working in the New York area, since April 2026. Revorion uses AI audits to help organizations in music rights, pharmaceutical and biotech licensing, diagnostics and medical device distribution, PE-backed healthcare platforms, university technology transfer and royalty-backed funds recover revenue that is contractually owed but never received, on a pure contingency basis of 10% of the revenue recovered, with no fee if nothing is recovered. She wrote: “I’m doing the EA thing of making a lot of money to give away.”⁠[3]

Revorion’s home page says that a typical corporation has 2–5% revenue leakage and that its AI platform can recover it.⁠[12]

As of November 2026 Social Impact Capital’s website lists her as founder and managing partner and describes the firm as a solo-GP firm with more than 40 venture partners worldwide, based in New York City, that invests as early as possible in the best ideas in impact; it lists 49 investments and states that, as of the second quarter of 2025, 69% of Fund I companies had received follow-on investment from top-tier firms and 100% had received follow-on investment. Portfolio companies featured on the site include Totus Medicines, Charm Industrial, Voyage Foods, Limelight Steel, WearLinq and Prometheus Fuels.⁠[13][14]

As of November 2026 the official website of Founders SchoolFounders SchoolFounders School is an entrepreneurship high school program opened by the Alpha School network in Manhattan, New York, covering grades 9 through 12, which welcomed its first students in September 2026. Students complete their academics in the morning with AI learning software and spend the rest of the day running their own companies under the guidance of entrepreneurs; the school has drawn attention for its promise to refund tuition if a student’s business does not reach $1 million in profit and for its $150,000 annual tuition.Open the full entry lists her among its mentors, with Social Impact Capital as her affiliation.⁠[15]

As of November 2026 her X bio reads: “Company builder. Revenue recovery autist & CEO @ Revorion. Produced water cleaner & Exec Chair @ Hydron. Former VC @socialimpactcap, and a mother.” It gives her location as NYC; her LinkedIn profile still lists her role as founder and managing partner of Social Impact Capital as current.⁠[10][3]

She holds a J.D. from the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, where she received the Jurisprudence Award for academic excellence and the Advocacy Award for persuasive writing, and a B.A. in interdisciplinary studies from Evergreen State College. In the interview Barry Ritholtz referred to the awards she won at the University of California, Berkeley and to her thesis there, “Reforming Federal Tax Policy to Support Social Entrepreneurs”; she explained that IRS rules on deploying nonprofit assets into for-profit impact investing are unclear, which makes people in the sector nervous, and argued that the rules should be clarified.⁠[4][5][1]

In the same interview she said: “I actually have a PhD in Applied Math,” adding that it helps her with valuation; the speaker biographies published by We Rule and The New School list the J.D. and B.A. above and no doctorate.⁠[1][4][5]

Her LinkedIn profile lists a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2011; a bachelor’s degree from The Evergreen State College, 1996–1999, in an interdisciplinary major focused on chemistry, philosophy, art and the history of ideas; and fine and studio arts at the University of Montana, 1994–1995.⁠[3]

Among the testimonials on Social Impact Capital’s website, Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, founder of Thiel CapitalThiel CapitalThiel Capital is an American investment firm founded by Peter Thiel in 2011 that provides strategic and operational support for his investment initiatives and entrepreneurial ventures; Founders Fund, Mithril, Valar Ventures, the Thiel Fellowship, and Breakout Labs were all incubated by the firm or its predecessors. It also invests in startups in its own name, partnered with Pacific Century to sponsor the Bridgetown series of special purpose acquisition companies, and took part in Bullish’s strategic funding round in 2021.Open the full entry, calls her “a terrific investor” who is “tracking the early stages of building a top-tier VC firm,” and the site notes that he is a limited partner in Fund I; Rob Hayes is also noted as a Fund I limited partner. Jason Pontin, a general partner at DCVCDCVCDCVC (Data Collective) is an American deep tech venture capital firm founded in 2010 by Matt Ocko and Zachary Bogue, with offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, California. It invests in companies that use computing and AI to solve real-world problems in fields such as energy, climate, biomedicine, defense, space, and industry; as of October 2026 it had more than $4 billion in assets under management across 13 funds.Open the full entry and formerly a venture partner at the firm, writes that her superpower is “plunging obsessively into the data on the most difficult social impact problems.” Peter Levine, a general partner at Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry, says that when studying social impact models for his family foundation they kept hearing that Social Impact Capital’s work was the “gold standard”; HubSpot co-founder and former chief executive Brian HalliganBrian HalliganHubSpot co-founder, founder coach and investor.Open the full entry says she has an excellent reputation; and Emitwise co-founder and chief executive Mauro Cozzi calls her “the single most impactful person in Emitwise’s history to date,” says that Social Impact Capital introduced the company to a major customer and to the top-tier venture firm that led its next round and gives quick, substantive feedback on the board, and writes: “I have no doubt Social Impact Capital will soon be recognized as one of the leading funds in the world.”⁠[2][13]

On the same page, Scott Barclay, a general partner at Insight PartnersInsight PartnersInsight Partners is a venture capital and private equity firm founded in New York in 1995 by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock, investing in software and technology companies from early through late stages. As of December 31, 2025, its website reported over $90 billion in regulatory assets under management and investments in more than 900 companies.Open the full entry, says his firm takes companies seriously when Social Impact Capital is on the cap table; Daniel Eicher, a general partner at SOSV, calls it “a top-tier Seed fund”; Andela co-founder Jeremy Johnson says the firm supported his company early; ACTUAL co-founder Rajesh Chandran says she was one of ACTUAL’s earliest investors; James Morrison, founder of Cy Biopharma, says she backed the company when the idea was considered radical and is known for thorough pre-investment research; Jake Harris of DBL says her talk at the Yale School of Business was well received and notes that he interned at Social Impact Capital before joining DBL; Kathryn Myronuk of Singularity UniversitySingularity UniversitySingularity University is a technology and leadership education organization founded by Peter H. Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. It offers short executive programs, organizational training and support for entrepreneurs, focusing on rapidly developing technologies and their social and business implications.Open the full entry’s founding team says she helps define 21st-century venture capitalists; Jay Zaveri, a former partner at Social CapitalSocial CapitalSocial Capital is a US technology investment firm founded in 2011 and led by Chamath Palihapitiya. Its activities evolved from venture funds toward investing and incubation with permanent proprietary capital.Open the full entry, calls her an investor who helps companies early on; Carson Kahn, co-founder and chief product officer of Spindle AI and a venture partner at the firm, says he is consistently impressed by the intellectual rigor of the talent that she and her network attract; Simon Huck, co-founder of JUDY, says that a close investor highly recommended Social Impact Capital and that after meeting her and her team he could see why; and J. Austin RussellAustin RussellAustin Russell is an American entrepreneur who founded the lidar company Luminar Technologies in 2012 and was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2013; after Luminar listed on Nasdaq through a SPAC merger in 2020, Forbes called him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. In 2025 he resigned as Luminar’s chief executive and board chair following an inquiry by the board’s audit committee and founded Russell AI Labs; Luminar filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2025, and a court approved the sale of its businesses in January 2026.Open the full entry, in real estate, writes: “What glass ceiling? Sarah Cone is an inspiration to all.”⁠[2]

The description of episode 30 of InvestmentNews’s “Investing in Change” podcast calls her the founder and managing partner and an experienced venture capitalist who has shown that impact investing can produce strong financial returns, and states that ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry called her a “risk-taker who has proven herself.”⁠[6]

The press page of Social Impact Capital’s website lists her comments on corporate governance in The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry on June 7, 2018; her comments on UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry’s next chief executive on CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry on June 12, 2018; her keynote at Slush New York on June 27, 2019; and a Bloomberg item of December 23, 2019 on why impact investing does not have to mean underperformance.⁠[16]

In the 2019 interview she said that investing had been her “primary hobby in the world since I was eight,” and that as a child she followed her stocks in the newspaper. She has a daughter. She said that she often goes to art galleries and called herself “a big bowler.” The books she mentioned included the “Quantum Computing for Babies” series and similar science books for infants and Norman Rush’s novel “Mating,” which she loves; she watches “Silicon Valley,” is a fan of “The West Wing” and listens a lot to Eric WeinsteinEric WeinsteinEric Weinstein is an American mathematician, investor and podcast host with a Harvard PhD in mathematics who has served as managing director of Thiel Capital and hosted the podcast The Portal; his proposed physics unification theory, Geometric Unity, and his coinage “Intellectual Dark Web” have both drawn wide discussion and controversy.Open the full entry’s podcast “The Portal.”⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/sarah_cone (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-hogan-cone/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14][13][3]

Revorion: Official website: https://revorion.ai/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12][10]

Social Impact Capital: Official website: https://social-impact-capital.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

Omidyar Network: Official website: https://omidyar.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

Illuminate Ventures: Official website: https://www.illuminate.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Founders School: Official website: https://founders.school/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

Hydron Desalination: Official website: https://www.hydrondesal.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]