# Blake Irving

> Blake Irving is a seed investor in San Luis Obispo backing FinTech and Financial Services. See 5 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Location: San Luis Obispo, United States
- Total investments: 5
- Last investment: Jan 2022
- Lead investor: 40%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/blakeirving
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/blakei
- Website: http://www.godaddy.com
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/blakeirving

Blake Irving is a seed investor in San Luis Obispo focused on FinTech and Financial Services. In January of 2013 Blake Irving joined back-office administration and peer/community support.Prior to Go Daddy, Mr. Irving was EVP and Chief Product Officer at Before Yahoo!, Mr. Irving spent 15 years at Other accomplishments at Microsoft include: • Launching the first version of in-house advertising system (ad-expert), sponsored IAB ad standards and enabled growth of Microsoft advertising revenue to $1.3 billion.• Developing and launching MSN Messenger, surpassing AOL, ICQ, and Yahoo in growth rate; later becoming the market leader with more than 300 million users and more than 70% global share. • Integrating Hotmail into MSN, managing growth and ensuring a re-architecture of the service to manage growth. (Messenger growth from 0 to 18 million users and Hotmail growth from 7 million to 290 million users).Mr. Irving started his career in 1981 at Xerox. He has been at the forefront of innovation, having been involved in numerous products and services that are now staples of the internet, including typography, communications on the personal computer, subscription services and back-end online advertising. From 2009 to 2010, he was a professor in the MBA program at Pepperdine University. Mr. Irving is a graduate of San Diego State and received an MBA degree from Pepperdine University. He currently resides in San Luis Obispo, CA.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $1.2M–$2.3M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| FinTech | 2 | 40% |
| Financial Services | 2 | 40% |
| Finance | 1 | 20% |
| E-Commerce | 1 | 20% |
| Incubators | 1 | 20% |

9 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 2 | 40% |
| Pre-Seed | 1 | 20% |
| Funding Round | 1 | 20% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Colombia | 2 | 40% |
| United States | 1 | 20% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Dondo | Dondo is an AI Copilot for e-commerce sellers that saves time and money by automatically optimizing and creating thousands of platform-specific descriptions and listings. With Dondo, sellers can post SEO-enhanced listings across marketplaces and social media platforms like Instagram, MercadoLibre, Shopify, TikTok, and more, all with just the clickof a button. | $2.3M | Seed | Jan 01, 2022 |  |
| Dondo | Dondo is an AI Copilot for e-commerce sellers that saves time and money by automatically optimizing and creating thousands of platform-specific descriptions and listings. With Dondo, sellers can post SEO-enhanced listings across marketplaces and social media platforms like Instagram, MercadoLibre, Shopify, TikTok, and more, all with just the clickof a button. | $2.1M | Pre-Seed | Jan 19, 2021 |  |
| Dondo | Dondo is an AI Copilot for e-commerce sellers that saves time and money by automatically optimizing and creating thousands of platform-specific descriptions and listings. With Dondo, sellers can post SEO-enhanced listings across marketplaces and social media platforms like Instagram, MercadoLibre, Shopify, TikTok, and more, all with just the clickof a button. |  | Pre-Seed | Dec 30, 2020 |  |
| Valiu | Valiu is a fintech company that provides borderless financial services to all Venezuelans. It has created a mobile application that allows access to a convenient dollar savings and transfer system for any migrant or family member, regardless of their socioeconomic status or the range of their phone. The company was co-founded by Simon Chamorroand Alberto Niego in 2018. | $1.2M | Seed | Sep 30, 2019 |  |
| Madrona Venture Labs | Madrona Venture Labs is a startup studio that builds companies from scratch. Madrona Venture Labs is based in Seattle and housed at Madrona Venture Group. The studio makes use of money from its funds to incubate concepts and recruit a management crew to ultimately run the enterprise.Founded in 2014, MVL has spun out greater than a dozen firms,together with some that had been later acquired by Nordstrom, Uber, and Mailchimp. | $11.3M |  | May 11, 2019 |  |

5 of 5 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Alpha Edison](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alpha-edison) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Acequia Capital (AceCap)](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/acequia-capital) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [AME Cloud Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ame-cloud-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [BG, LLC](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bg-llc) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [IDEO CoLab Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ideo-colab) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Inversiones Patagonia S.A.](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/inversiones-patagonia-s-a) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

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### Similar industry
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### Similar stage
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## FAQ

### What does Blake Irving invest in?

Blake Irving invests primarily in FinTech, Financial Services and Finance startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 5 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in Colombia. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Blake Irving's check size?

Blake Irving typically joins rounds of $1.2M–$2.3M at Seed. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Blake Irving participates in.

### When did Blake Irving last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Blake Irving closed in Jan 2022. Shizune tracks 5 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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