Paola Retes

Paola Retes joined LiveOak after graduating from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where her main extracurricular activity was as a founding board member of Galvanizer, a nonprofit incubator for female founders. Before business school, Paola was an early employee at Ironspring Ventures. She assisted in all aspects of company formation and served as lead associate in the firm’s investments in ICON, Fast Radius, and Mercado Labs. Her investment experience covers multiple stages and industries, focusing on enterprise software. Earlier in her career, Paola held various operating and investing roles at Holt Ventures, Becton Dickinson, Deloitte, and Matterhorn Capital Management. Paola also holds a CFA® charter.

LiveOak Venture Partners is comprised of early-stage, lead investors who invest in exceptional entrepreneurial teams, not pre-determined sectors or business models. Together they have invested nearly $500MM in companies based in Texas and successfully created over $5B of enterprise value.