-
Deshpande has spent the past decade looking for the next big consumer trends.
-
She's one of the world's top seed investors, backing companies like Carrot Fertility and Wildtype.
-
Read "The Seed 40: The best women early-stage investors of 2025."
Sara Deshpande first met Rene Caissie, the CEO of Medeloop, in 2022 at Startup Garage, the Stanford business school class she helps teach. He pitched her a fledgling startup idea.
He and his classmates shared a few business ideas with Deshpande: consumer genetic services, health data tracking, and health management for conditions like diabetes. But Deshpande wasn't convinced. She told Caissie and his team members that they needed to think of their potential consumers first to identify more unique and novel problems.
So Caissie reworked his concept and came back to her 18 months later with something better.
That second version became Medeloop, an AI-powered medical research startup that now counts Deshpande's venture firm, Maven Ventures, as an investor. It has since raised $23 million from General Catalyst, Maven, and other firms.
Deshpande's criticism was emblematic of her approach as an early-stage investor. She isn't the kind of VC who politely nods and writes a check or supports her founders' ideas without question.
"With my founders, I'm really known for tough love," she says. "I never say anything I wouldn't say directly to them, and they know everything I'm saying comes from a place of wanting them to succeed."
Deshpande has been investing at Maven Ventures since 2014, when she joined as a general partner. Founded in 2013 by Jim Scheinman, Maven set out to become a go-to seed-stage firm for consumer startups, with bets including the $22 billion videoconferencing company Zoom and the $9 billion AI search startup Perplexity.
At Maven, Deshpande invests in consumer applications across digital health, climate, and AI. She's backed companies including the fertility benefits startup Carrot Fertility and the sustainable seafood company Wildtype.
Above all, she looks for founders who share her vision of chasing emerging consumer trends and are relentless in their pursuit.
"We like to back people who'll tear through a brick wall to bring their vision to life," she said.
From healthcare strategy to startup advisory
Deshpande began her career at Deloitte in healthcare strategy during the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
"It was a moment when all our clients were trying to figure out what the next wave of consumer healthcare would look like," she says.