Seattle-based venture capital firm Flying Fish Partners has named Heather Gorham, a veteran of J.P. Morgan, as principal.
Prior to joining Flying Fish, Gorham spent more than four years at J.P. Morgan, the commercial and investment banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM). Her hire comes after Flying Fish raised a $70 million fund, its second, in May and continues to add new team members.
"I’m excited to join the Flying Fish team and to be a part of an organization that has been at the forefront of investing in AI for many years," Gorham said Thursday in a news release. "I look forward to supporting the growth of our existing portfolio and continuing to make new investments."
Gorham worked with tech companies in the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest while at J.P. Morgan, according to Flying Fish, and she helped launch the bank's early-stage tech banking team in Seattle. According to her LinkedIn page, she spent time at Tesla and the semiconductor company Onsemi earlier in her career.
Flying Fish was formed in 2017 but began investing in 2018. The firm's first fund was $37 million. Flying Fish focuses on early-stage companies in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its portfolio includes the data science startup YData and the sales and marketing data startup Falkon.
In addition to announcing its second fund in May, Flying Fish also announced its expansion into Alberta. The firm named Tiffany Linke-Boyko as principal to lead its Canadian operations. Concurrent with the $70 million fund in May, Flying Fish named Adriane Brown, former president and chief operating officer at Intellectual Ventures, as managing partner and Lisa Nelson, co-founder of M12, as a venture partner on the new fund.
"The big message that we've been putting out there is that we're trying to hire the people that will ultimately replace us," Heather Redman, co-founder and managing partner at Flying Fish, previously told the Business Journal. "If you don't really start thinking as early as possible about succession planning, you won't successfully build a firm. A lot of firms fail because they don't think about that."
