Company-Building is in Our Blood

Bolt is a venture capital firm designed to address the unique needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software. Most institutional investors have moved upstream and back hardware companies that have completed product development. Bolt fills the gap in early stage hardware financing, investing in pre-seed, pre-product companies.

We believe capital is a commodity and people are not. We believe people are at the center of great products and great products are at the center of exceptional companies. We love lean, technical teams and thrive on helping founders bridge the gap between idea and product/market fit. An investment from Bolt brings a full stack team devoted to helping you get to market faster, raise smart follow-on capital, and build a foundation for success.

General Partners

Ben Einstein

Ben is an experienced product designer and venture capitalist. Prior to founding Bolt in 2013, Ben ran Brainstream Design, a product design and development consultancy in Massachusetts. Ben has been directly responsible for bringing a long list of products to market covering diverse sectors including consumer electronics, high-performance audio, sporting goods and green energy. Ben is a writer and speaker on the topics of venture capital investing for hardware startups. Ben holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Design Engineering from Hampshire College.

Axel Bichara

Axel is an experienced entrepreneur and venture capitalist. From 1993 to 2012, Axel was a partner with Atlas Ventures, managing over $2.6 billion of investment capital through seven funds. Axel brings with him a deep knowledge of CAD tools. Axel co-founded Premise (acquired by Computervision), led the financing of SolidWorks (acquired by Dassault Systèmes), led the financing of GrabCAD (acquired by Stratasys) and co-founded OnShape. Axel holds Masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering from TU Berlin and MIT as well as an MBA from INSEAD.

Greg McAdoo

Greg joined Bolt as a General Partner in 2017. Previously, Greg was a senior partner at Sequoia Capital for more than 12 years where he led investments in many breakout companies including Y Combinator, AirBnB and Isilon. Prior to Sequoia, Greg was CEO of Sentient networks (acquired by Cisco) and held senior engineering and executive level positions at several other companies, including Cisco, Micom Communications (IPO) and Datability Systems (acquired by Hayes/Bay Networks). Greg studied Computer and Electrical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology.