Katherine Barr focuses primarily on investments in technology platforms and services that leverage data analytics and machine learning to disrupt large markets. Her specific areas of investment focus include Retail and E-Commerce Innovation (tech, data and logistics-enabled platforms that are disrupting the retail and e-commerce market), Consumer Marketplaces and Services (B2B2C platforms, marketplaces and services that optimize and improve our lives as consumers), and Work Force Innovation (platforms and services that more optimally manage, leverage or replace human workforces with Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and/or robotics).
Katherine currently sits on the boards of BuildDirect, KEY Concierge, Ruby Ribbon, and WorkFusion, sourced and was a board observer for Ticketfly (acquired by Pandora (NASDAQ:P)), and is an investor in Reserve, Ritual, FIGS, Zuckerberg Media, and Retention Science.
Katherine is a Founding Board and Charter Member as well as former Co-Chair of the C100, the leading Canadian technology entrepreneur association in North America, and guest lectures a yearly executive education negotiation session at Stanford University. She is also on the board of Communitech, the leading technology innovation hub in Waterloo, Canada, and is an Emmy Noether Council Member at the Perimeter Institute, one of the world’s leading institutes of theoretical physics.
Katherine has over 11 years of operating and entrepreneurial experience. This includes being a Senior Negotiator at Vantage Partners for global technology companies such as IBM, Cisco, Applied Materials, and HP on their deals with customers, partners, and service providers, a Senior Product Manager at HSA (a communications startup), and a Senior Marketing Manager at ACCESS (a global software solutions provider for mobile devices).
FACTS & STATS
- Katherine is an advisor to 500Startups and was a founding sponsor of Startup2Startup.
- She was first inspired by computer technology when her father bought a TRS-80, which she used to play games and write programs in BASIC. And to prove that she isn’t a total nerd, her best off-piste powder skiing experience was in Niseko, Hokkaido, Japan.
- She received her B.A. from McGill University, and completed an M.A. and the M.S. core curriculum in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University
Bruce Cleveland