Norwest

Ritual’s commitment to transparent, authentic communication about its products was one of the key reasons Norwest Partner Lisa Wu chose to invest back in 2016. This level of transparency with consumers is rare in the lightly regulated supplements industry. Time and again, founder and CEO Katerina Markov Schneider has demonstrated her commitment to pushing the industry forward. Ritual’s growth over the past decade reflects the success of that strategy. Ellie Austin has the story in Fortune about Kat’s latest effort: a letter urging Congress to address “safety and efficacy gaps in the supplement industry.” ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/ebEKtjbq

Norwest Partner Scott Beechuk recently shared insights with The Wall Street Journal on where agentic AI is making the biggest near-term impact — from customer service and sales acceleration to legal casework and supplier negotiations. Read more ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/dWSp3XRX

HumanX starts today! Our investment team and portfolio leaders are ready. Here’s who will be on the mic this week 🎤  ➡️ Norwest General Partner Dave Zilberman will be giving the opening remarks and moderating the Security track on Monday, March 10 starting at 10 am on Stage 3.  ➡️ “Banking on AI for personalized customer experiences” featuring Colleen Stauffer, CMO at HoneyBook. Monday, March 10 @ 10:45 - 11:30am on Stage 2, Level 6. ➡️ “AI at the frontlines of cyber threat protection” featuring Itai Tevet, CEO, Intezer. Monday, March 10 @ 1:45 - 2:30pm on Stage 3, Level 6. ➡️ "From thought to action: Implementing agentic AI at scale for real-world use cases" featuring Abhi Maheshwari, CEO, Aisera. Monday, March 10 @ 3 - 3:45pm in Capri 6, Level 4. ➡️ “Automate today, scale tomorrow!” featuring Gadi Shamia, CEO at Replicant, Tuesday, March 11 @ 10:45 - 11:15am on Stage 2, Level 6 ➡️ “How smarter platforms are redefining decision-making” featuring Richard Socher, CEO, You.com. Tuesday, March 11 @ 3:15 - 3:35pm on Center Stage, Level 6. ➡️ “AI innovations: Transforming customer experience” featuring Suruchi S., VP, Marketing at Minted. Tuesday, March 11 @ 4:15 - 4:45pm on Stage 3, Level 6. Plus, catch Norwest team members Scott Beechuk, David Glaser, Bayan Alizadeh and Norwest portfolio company, ActiveFence, in the crowd throughout the week.

On this International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the many ambitious, innovative female investors, founders, and leaders in our orbit. There’s no better time to spotlight the powerhouse all-women investment team that led our partnership with scalp health pioneer Divi Founder Dani Austin Ramirez’s story has resonated with her audience since the brand’s earliest days, when she shared her own hair loss experience on social media – and it resonated with our investment team, too. Our Growth Equity leaders Sonya Brown, Lauren Beauchamp, and Angela Johnson bring the perspectives of being in Divi’s target demographic and the expertise to help the company navigate its next phase of growth. We’re all in on supporting Divi as the team expands its loyal community and fast-growing, science-based product line. More on Divi’s story and this dynamic investment team: https://lnkd.in/gzJbH5zV #IWD2025

For General Partner Ran Ding and Partner Chris S., growth equity is all about the people driving the businesses forward. In the words of Ran in BluWave's Karma School of Business Podcast with Sean Mooney, a company’s management team is “one of the most important ingredients” to having a successful partnership. Tune in to the conversation to hear more about their approach to building trust, creating value, and supporting companies in the Norwest portfolio: https://bit.ly/3F2E3xo  

Today’s organizations are drowning in PDFs, PowerPoints, images, and other unstructured data, making it tough to extract meaningful insights. LlamaIndex is ready to change that, and we’re proud to lead its Series A. Co-founded by Jerry Liu and Simon Suo, LlamaIndex is making GenAI applications more relevant and tailored to individual businesses’ needs. The platform allows developers to create custom knowledge agents on top of LLMs and allows for more accurate, relevant, and timely responses. Enthusiasm among the open source community has been off the charts (3M downloads in 2 years!), and LlamaIndex is ready for enterprise prime time. With this funding, they’ll expand the team and keep developing the core generative AI agent platform, enabling faster creation of more reliable knowledge agents. This is the latest investment in a series supporting our thesis of enabling faster enterprise AI adoption with scalable, transformative solutions. LlamaIndex is a game-changer for AI agent development, which is core to that adoption. More from Dave Zilberman and David Glaser on what’s next for LlamaIndex: https://nvp.co/llamaindex  

Today, we’re happy to welcome Callio Therapeutics to the Norwest portfolio! Callio is pioneering next-generation, dual-payload antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) to enhance cancer treatment. Callio’s strong management team, Piers Ingram, Jerome Boyd-Kirkup, Angele Maki, and Naomi Hunder, has extensive experience in leading biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies. Their expertise, coupled with the dual-payload ADC technology, positions Callio to transform cancer therapy and address a large unmet medical need. Welcome to the portfolio, Callio! Read more about the company: https://lnkd.in/dRXKMyGN

We’re celebrating the promotions of three rising stars at Norwest! Drum roll 🥁 for our promoted investors: Ken Graham, Anubha Goyal and JP McKeever! 🌟 Ken is an exceptional contributor to the Growth Equity team. He excels at all aspects of sourcing and is thoughtful about exploring new categories of interest, diligent in market research, and persistent at reaching high-quality companies.   🌟 Anubha has been an integral part of our India team since joining the firm in 2022. She has a strong understanding of the consumer space and is hardworking, dependable, and excellent at process management. Anubha is a trustworthy team player and a true culture carrier for the team.   🌟 JP, a tremendous contributor to the Growth Equity team, focuses on healthcare and approaches his work with professionalism, proactivity, and a positive attitude. Join us in congratulating them on their next chapter! 

It’s a very happy Friday here at Norwest as we celebrate even more team members on their promotions! 🎉👏 🌟 Lia Hanson has been promoted to Vice President of Marketing. A cornerstone of our Marketing team, Lia always finds creative ways to enhance our brand. She’s a chameleon who adapts effortlessly to the ever-changing nature of her work. 🌟 Dawn Timan has been promoted to Vice President. For 14 years, Dawn has been instrumental in growing and building out complex financial functions for Norwest. She is a great mentor who adds tremendous value to the firm. 🌟 Erica S. has been promoted to Valuation & Reporting Manager on our Finance team. An invaluable asset to the finance team, Erica consistently delivers high-quality work and is always willing to guide and support her colleagues. 🌟 Jenny Houser has been promoted to Senior HR Generalist. Jenny joined Norwest two years ago and has become a strong team player who enriches the HR function. She’s dependable, organized, and driven – a winning combo. 🌟 Deion Scott, CPA Scott has been promoted to Tax Manager on our Finance team. Deion continues to make a significant impact on our tax function, collaborating with key teams across the firm. He shares best practices with the team, consistently seeking out opportunities to learn and grow. Congratulations, all!

Cheers to the newest Vice President on our Healthcare team, Suraj Shah! Since joining in 2021, Suraj has expanded our healthcare investments across digital health, healthcare and life sciences software, medical devices, and diagnostics. He’s a team player, always willing to go the extra mile to provide valuable insights on risks and returns. Suraj is known for elevating team performance on every project he touches, and his sourcing and due diligence efforts have been crucial to key investments such as Courier Health. He also played a key role in the 2024 acquisition of Vertos Medical by Stryker. We can’t wait to see what you achieve next!