Brian Rothenberg
Partner @ Defy.vc
San Francisco, United States
Brian Rothenberg is a Partner at Defy.vc. Brian previously worked as TaskRabbit’s Co-Head of Marketing, where he helped to grow the business more than 3x over his tenure. Brian joined TaskRabbit via the acquisition of his own startup, SkillSlate (backed by $1.5M from First Round Capital & Canaan Partners), which he co-founded and led thecompany’s product and marketing teams. Before joining the startup world, Brian worked at Canaan Partners, a $3.5B venture capital firm, as well as Yahoo!, where he served as Product Manager and SEO Team Lead for the $1B Local Marketplaces & Commerce division.Brian earned his MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business, and his BS in Business Administration from the University of Southern California.
- Total investments:
- 8
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 63%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Brian Rothenberg invests in
Stages Brian Rothenberg invests in
Countries Brian Rothenberg invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 3 (38%)
- Artificial Intelligence 2 (25%)
- Travel 1 (13%)
- Analytics 1 (13%)
- Agentic AI 1 (13%)
Stage
- Seed 4 (50%)
- Series A 1 (13%)
- Series B 1 (13%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 1 (13%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safara is a hotel booking platform and membership built for frequent travelers to save time and money. Members get 10% back at 7,000 of the world's best hotels. "This New Travel Subscription Company Will Change the Way You Book Hotels" -Afar,https://www.afar.com/magazine/safara-is-the-online-travel-agency-for-a-new-decade"Save money at some of the trendiest hotels in the world" - Travel + Leisure, https://www.travelandleisure.com/hotels-resorts/safara-hotel-booking-subscription-startup"Safara is switching up an out-of-date industry" - Vogue, https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/holiday-new-openings-2020 | $7.3M / Venture - Series Unknown / Dec 19, 2024 | ||
| PuppyGraph operates as a graph engine that enables users to query data stores. | $5M / Seed / Nov 07, 2024 | ||
| Safara is a hotel booking platform and membership built for frequent travelers to save time and money. Members get 10% back at 7,000 of the world's best hotels. "This New Travel Subscription Company Will Change the Way You Book Hotels" -Afar,https://www.afar.com/magazine/safara-is-the-online-travel-agency-for-a-new-decade"Save money at some of the trendiest hotels in the world" - Travel + Leisure, https://www.travelandleisure.com/hotels-resorts/safara-hotel-booking-subscription-startup"Safara is switching up an out-of-date industry" - Vogue, https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/holiday-new-openings-2020 | $4M / Seed / Sep 01, 2022 | ||
| Perfect Venue helps restaurants increase private event sales through our AI powered CRM & venue booking marketplace. | $3.6M / Seed / Apr 21, 2022 | ||
| Novi is the leading platform for AI-driven product discoverability, helping brands ensure their products are recommended by AI systems across the shopping platforms where consumers increasingly discover and buy. Novi structures, optimizes, and distributes product data so it can be accurately understood and surfaced by AI systems across shoppingplatforms. By transforming fragmented product information into category-specific, AI-readable formats, Novi ensures products are consistently represented wherever consumers search, browse, and shop. Novi also strengthens each brand’s digital footprint by increasing citation presence and consistency across platforms, driving measurable gains in visibility, traffic, and conversion. Novi is building the product data foundation that AI-powered commerce runs on. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Novi is backed by Tiger Global, Defy, Greylock, and other leading venture firms. | $40M / Series B / Feb 03, 2022 | ||
| Novi is the leading platform for AI-driven product discoverability, helping brands ensure their products are recommended by AI systems across the shopping platforms where consumers increasingly discover and buy. Novi structures, optimizes, and distributes product data so it can be accurately understood and surfaced by AI systems across shoppingplatforms. By transforming fragmented product information into category-specific, AI-readable formats, Novi ensures products are consistently represented wherever consumers search, browse, and shop. Novi also strengthens each brand’s digital footprint by increasing citation presence and consistency across platforms, driving measurable gains in visibility, traffic, and conversion. Novi is building the product data foundation that AI-powered commerce runs on. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Novi is backed by Tiger Global, Defy, Greylock, and other leading venture firms. | $10.3M / Series A / Sep 07, 2021 | ||
| Novi is the leading platform for AI-driven product discoverability, helping brands ensure their products are recommended by AI systems across the shopping platforms where consumers increasingly discover and buy. Novi structures, optimizes, and distributes product data so it can be accurately understood and surfaced by AI systems across shoppingplatforms. By transforming fragmented product information into category-specific, AI-readable formats, Novi ensures products are consistently represented wherever consumers search, browse, and shop. Novi also strengthens each brand’s digital footprint by increasing citation presence and consistency across platforms, driving measurable gains in visibility, traffic, and conversion. Novi is building the product data foundation that AI-powered commerce runs on. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Novi is backed by Tiger Global, Defy, Greylock, and other leading venture firms. | $1.5M / Seed / Mar 11, 2020 | ||
| See all 8 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Defy.vc
Defy is a seed-stage venture fund focused on emerging high-potential opportunities. It is driven by a passion for working closely with entrepreneurs, especially through the transformative time after seed funding. The firm invests in people and in their conviction and talent for creating real change.Defy was founded in 2016 by Neil Sequeira andTrae Vassallo and is based in San Mateo, California, United States.
Defy.vc Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Bob Rosin
Partner
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Brian Rothenberg
Partner
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Kamil Saeid
Partner
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Madison McIlwain
Partner, Seed
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Medha Agarwal
General Partner
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FAQ
What does Brian Rothenberg invest in?
Brian Rothenberg invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and Travel startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 8 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Brian Rothenberg?
Public channels for Brian Rothenberg include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Brian Rothenberg last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Brian Rothenberg closed in Dec 2024. Shizune tracks 8 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 Sep 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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