Talking shop with Twitter’s recent head of corp dev — and now VC — Seksom Suriyapa

Seksom Suriyapa was seemingly destined to land at a venture firm. A Stanford Law graduate, he worked at two blue-chip investment banks before joining the cybersecurity company McAfee as a senior corp dev employee, later logging six years at the human resources software company SuccessFactors and, in 2018, landing at Twitter, where he headed up its 12-person corporate development team until June. The bigger surprise is that Suriyapa — who just joined the LA-based venture firm Upfront Ventures — didn’t make the leap sooner. “The catalyst was finding a firm that felt like the exact right fit for me,” says Suriyapa. We talked earlier today with Suriyapa — who lives and will remain in the Bay Area — about his new role at Upfront, where he will be leading its expanding growth-stage practice with firm founder Yves Sisteron. He also shed light on how Twitter — which has been on a bit of buying spree — thinks about acquisitions these days. Our chat has been edited lightly for length. TC: How did you wind up joining Upfront? SS: [Longtime partner] Mark Suster and I were introduced through a mutual business acquaintance in the ven… Click below to read the full story from TechCrunch
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