# Ann Winblad

> Ann Winblad is a Series A investor at OptiMine Software backing Software and Enterprise Software. See 36 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [OptiMine Software](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/optimine-software)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 36
- Last investment: Sep 2018
- Lead investor: 33%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/annwinblad

Ann Winblad is a Series A investor at OptiMine Software in San Francisco focused on Software and Enterprise Software. Ann Winblad is the co-founder and a Managing Director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (www.humwin.com ) is a leading venture capital firm focused on software investing and manages over $1 billion in cumulative capital. Since Hummer Winblad Venture Partners’ inception in 1989 the firm has launched over 100 newsoftware companies.Ann has over 30 years of experience in the software industry as a successful software entrepreneur, strategy advisor, technical author and venture capitalist. Her background and experience have been chronicled in many national business and trade publications. Ann has a BA in Mathematics and in Business Administration. She has an MA in Education with a focus in International Economics from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Ann also has an honorary Doctorate of Law degree from the University of St. Thomas.Ann served and serves as a Director of numerous start-up and public companies. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas, Director and former Chairperson of SVForum and serves as an advisor to many entrepreneurial organizations.Ann has served as a Director of numerous start-up and public companies and currently serves as a director of Ace Metrix, Karmasphere, MuleSoft, Sonatype, and Voltage Security. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of St. Thomas. Ann is an advisor to numerous entrepreneur groups, as well as Director and former Chairperson of SV Forum.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 6 | 17% |
| Enterprise Software | 3 | 8% |
| SaaS | 2 | 6% |
| Analytics | 2 | 6% |
| Real Time | 2 | 6% |

34 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Series A | 9 | 25% |
| Series B | 7 | 19% |
| Series C | 6 | 17% |
| Funding Round | 4 | 11% |
| Series D | 2 | 6% |

9 stages tracked in total.

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 10 | 28% |
| Germany | 1 | 3% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Sonatype | Sonatype is a developer-friendly, full-spectrum software supply chain management providing organizations total control of their cloud-native development lifecycles, including third-party open-source code, first-party source code, infrastructure as code, and containerized code. The company supports 70% of the Fortune 100 and its commercial and opensource tools are trusted by 15 million developers around the world. With a vision to transform the way the world innovates, Sonatype helps organizations of all sizes build higher quality software that's more aligned with business needs, more maintainable, and more secure. Sonatype has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the Best Workplaces for Innovators in the world, two years in a row, and has been named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 5000 list for the past five years. Sonatype was established in 2008 and is based in Fulton, Maryland with offices in McLean, London, and Sydney. | $80M | Private Equity | Sep 07, 2018 |  |
| MuleSoft | MuleSoft makes it easy to connect the world’s applications, data, and devices. They provide a software platform that enables organizations to easily build application networks using APIs. APIs are the digital glue that allows applications to talk to each other and exchange data. Their flexible, unified platform connects nearly any application orsystem by leveraging APIs to quickly and securely share data, regardless of format or source, in application networks.It was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California,. | $128M | Series G | May 19, 2015 |  |
| OptiMine Software | OptiMine Software was founded by experienced software executives, including Rob Cooley and Doug Bryan, experts in marketing applications based on data mining. Together they have more than 25 years of experience in e-commerce analytics. It provides intelligent software for advertising optimization. There flagship product, OptiMine Paid Search BidManagement, forecasts the performance of each paid search ad placement each day and automatically sets optimal bids. It is used by leading organizations such as Overstock.com and Wells Fargo and may be implemented in-house, hosted, or as software-as-a-service (SaaS). | $2.9M | Series C | Jan 09, 2015 |  |
| Ace Metrix | Ace Metrix offers a live platform enabling companies to access timely, actionable data with real-time advertising campaign optimization. Through its platform companies can now access timely actionable data wherever, whenever they need to, enabling real-time advertising campaign optimization. It was founded in 2007 and headquartered in ElSegundo, California. | $4M | Series C | Aug 08, 2014 |  |
| MuleSoft | MuleSoft makes it easy to connect the world’s applications, data, and devices. They provide a software platform that enables organizations to easily build application networks using APIs. APIs are the digital glue that allows applications to talk to each other and exchange data. Their flexible, unified platform connects nearly any application orsystem by leveraging APIs to quickly and securely share data, regardless of format or source, in application networks.It was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California,. | $50.5M | Series F | Mar 03, 2014 |  |
| OptiMine Software | OptiMine Software was founded by experienced software executives, including Rob Cooley and Doug Bryan, experts in marketing applications based on data mining. Together they have more than 25 years of experience in e-commerce analytics. It provides intelligent software for advertising optimization. There flagship product, OptiMine Paid Search BidManagement, forecasts the performance of each paid search ad placement each day and automatically sets optimal bids. It is used by leading organizations such as Overstock.com and Wells Fargo and may be implemented in-house, hosted, or as software-as-a-service (SaaS). | $5.1M | Series B | Jan 22, 2014 |  |
| Karmasphere | Karmasphere unlocks the business potential of Hadoop so companies can deliver more personalized and relevant products and experiences to their customers. The Karmasphere Collaborative Analytics Workspace brings the power of data science to business analysts using SQL and automated big data workflow including data ingestion, data cleansing,table provisioning and running and scheduling queries in a self-service model without reliance on IT. Its social, web-based interface allows everyone who works with big data to more easily collaborate and share resources. Open and based on Apache Hadoop standards, Karmasphere leverages existing analytic skills, integrates with traditional BI and existing applications and supports leading Hadoop distributions including: Amazon Elastic Map Reduce, Cloudera, HortonWorks, IBM and MapR Technologies. Learn more at http://www.karmasphere.com | $1.5M | Series C | Sep 12, 2013 |  |
| MuleSoft | MuleSoft makes it easy to connect the world’s applications, data, and devices. They provide a software platform that enables organizations to easily build application networks using APIs. APIs are the digital glue that allows applications to talk to each other and exchange data. Their flexible, unified platform connects nearly any application orsystem by leveraging APIs to quickly and securely share data, regardless of format or source, in application networks.It was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California,. | $37M | Series E | Apr 03, 2013 |  |
| Karmasphere | Karmasphere unlocks the business potential of Hadoop so companies can deliver more personalized and relevant products and experiences to their customers. The Karmasphere Collaborative Analytics Workspace brings the power of data science to business analysts using SQL and automated big data workflow including data ingestion, data cleansing,table provisioning and running and scheduling queries in a self-service model without reliance on IT. Its social, web-based interface allows everyone who works with big data to more easily collaborate and share resources. Open and based on Apache Hadoop standards, Karmasphere leverages existing analytic skills, integrates with traditional BI and existing applications and supports leading Hadoop distributions including: Amazon Elastic Map Reduce, Cloudera, HortonWorks, IBM and MapR Technologies. Learn more at http://www.karmasphere.com | $3.5M | Series C | Dec 14, 2012 |  |
| Sonatype | Sonatype is a developer-friendly, full-spectrum software supply chain management providing organizations total control of their cloud-native development lifecycles, including third-party open-source code, first-party source code, infrastructure as code, and containerized code. The company supports 70% of the Fortune 100 and its commercial and opensource tools are trusted by 15 million developers around the world. With a vision to transform the way the world innovates, Sonatype helps organizations of all sizes build higher quality software that's more aligned with business needs, more maintainable, and more secure. Sonatype has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the Best Workplaces for Innovators in the world, two years in a row, and has been named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 5000 list for the past five years. Sonatype was established in 2008 and is based in Fulton, Maryland with offices in McLean, London, and Sydney. | $25M | Series C | Jul 10, 2012 |  |

10 of 36 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Morgenthaler Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/morgenthaler-ventures) — VC Fund, 15 deals together
- [Bay Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bay-partners) — VC Fund, 7 deals together
- [Lightspeed Venture Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/lightspeed-venture-partners) — VC Fund, 5 deals together
- [Palomar Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/palomar-ventures) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Calumet Venture Fund](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/calumet-venture-partners) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Sapphire Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sapphire-ventures) — VC Fund, 3 deals together

## About OptiMine Software

VC Fund · Minneapolis, United States

OptiMine Software was founded by experienced software executives, including Rob Cooley and Doug Bryan, experts in marketing applications based on data mining. Together they have more than 25 years of experience in e-commerce analytics. It provides intelligent software for advertising optimization. There flagship product, OptiMine Paid Search BidManagement, forecasts the performance of each paid search ad placement each day and automatically sets optimal bids. It is used by leading organizations such as Overstock.com and Wells Fargo and may be implemented in-house, hosted, or as software-as-a-service (SaaS).

5 contacts available at OptiMine Software.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Allen Hong | Vice President of Sales APAC | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/allen-hong |
| Ann Winblad | Director | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ann-winblad |
| Dickens Nyabuti | Senior Engineering Consultant | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/dickens-nyabuti |
| Jamie Glover | VP of Client Success | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jamie-glover |
| Matt Voda | Chief Executive Officer | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/matt-voda |

## Similar investors

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- [Antler](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/antler-be9c) — VC Fund
- [Alumni Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alumni-ventures-group) — VC Fund
- [General Catalyst](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/general-catalyst-partners) — VC Fund

## FAQ

### What does Ann Winblad invest in?

Ann Winblad invests primarily in Software, Enterprise Software and SaaS startups, most often at Series A and Series B stage. Most of the 36 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did Ann Winblad last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Ann Winblad closed in Sep 2018. Shizune tracks 36 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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