At Bessemer, we partner with audacious founders at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey, and our growth investments reinforce our commitment to partnering with founders and companies through the highs and lows of building enduring businesses. In this spirit, we celebrate Janelle Teng’s many contributions to growth stage businesses with her promotion to Vice President. Since joining the firm in 2020, Janelle has navigated her career as an investor by leading with an empathetic, founder-first approach; her pragmatism and creativity has played a pivotal role in counseling and partnering with entrepreneurs as they build and scale category-defining businesses.
Janelle focuses primarily on growth-stage investments in cloud and enterprise software, with particular interests in artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, data infrastructure, and developer platforms. She specializes in product strategy and product-led growth go-to-market execution for companies scaling past the Series B stage. Currently, Janelle serves as a board observer for Claroty, Databook, Netlify, Smule, and Virtru. She also works closely with product-led companies such as Canva, Imply Data, and Statespace.
“Janelle has made an indelible mark on the firm through her hard work, expertise in product management, and diligent focus on what matters most: investing in and supporting values-driven founders and leaders who are changing the game in their given category,” shares Elliott Robinson, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “As a former operator, Janelle’s experience at high-growth startups arms her with the insights necessary to provide strategic and grounded counsel to teams going through the highs-and-lows of building.”
As a top author of Bessemer’s Atlas, Janelle has also developed many of Bessemer’s PLG frameworks, roadmaps, and benchmark pieces; she is a co-contributor of State of the Cloud reports and the Scaling to $100 million series. Additionally, she is a primary contributor to the firm’s initiatives around The Cloud 100 and the BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index.
“Working closely with entrepreneurs is what matters the most to me. Whether it’s helping companies to understand metrics and benchmarks as they scale, or supporting hiring efforts and offering resources to cultivate inspiring places to work, serving the needs of a founder throughout their startup journey (and seeing that growth over time) is what’s most rewarding,” says Janelle. “Investing allows me to stand behind not only a company or product, but more importantly, the very people who are on the frontlines building something that has never been done before.”
Janelle began her career as a business analyst at McKinsey and Company before joining SalesforceIQ (formerly RelateIQ) as a product manager. A self-proclaimed science nerd at heart, Janelle studied human biology and economics at Stanford University, where she graduated with academic distinction and departmental honors. She also earned an MBA at Harvard Business School. Outside of work, you can find Janelle reading non-fiction books, playing tennis, or sending it on her snowboard.
