# Erik Benson

> Erik Benson is a Series A investor at Lighter Capital (Seattle) backing Software and SaaS. See 41 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Lighter Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/lighter-capital)
- Location: Seattle, United States
- Total investments: 41
- Last investment: Oct 2024
- Lead investor: 34%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/erik-benson/10/403/374
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/ebenson
- Website: http://www.voyagercapital.com
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/erikdbenson

Erik Benson is a General Partner with Voyager Capital, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm. Prior to Voyager, Erik was an EIR for Seattle-based WRF Capital after leadership roles at Mimix Inc., a pioneer in the area of motion capture and animation software for the gaming industry. Erik started his career in New York City for a predecessorbank to JPMorgan Chase called Chemical Bank, advising and financing private equity clients.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 11 | 27% |
| SaaS | 5 | 12% |
| Analytics | 4 | 10% |
| Video | 3 | 7% |
| Cloud Computing | 3 | 7% |

50 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Series A | 10 | 24% |
| Series B | 8 | 20% |
| Series C | 6 | 15% |
| Seed | 5 | 12% |
| Funding Round | 5 | 12% |

7 stages tracked in total.

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Carbon Robotics | Carbon Robotics is revolutionizing agriculture with AI and robotics to reduce costs and increase yields. Amid labor challenges, rising input costs, and increasing concerns about herbicide use, growers worldwide are seeking smarter, more efficient ways to farm. Carbon Robotics addresses these needs by delivering advanced AI robotic laser weeders andtractor autonomy that drives efficiencies to the global community. Learn more at carbonrobotics.com. | $70M | Series D | Oct 21, 2024 |  |
| Carbon Robotics | Carbon Robotics is revolutionizing agriculture with AI and robotics to reduce costs and increase yields. Amid labor challenges, rising input costs, and increasing concerns about herbicide use, growers worldwide are seeking smarter, more efficient ways to farm. Carbon Robotics addresses these needs by delivering advanced AI robotic laser weeders andtractor autonomy that drives efficiencies to the global community. Learn more at carbonrobotics.com. | $30M | Series C | Apr 11, 2023 |  |
| Carbon Robotics | Carbon Robotics is revolutionizing agriculture with AI and robotics to reduce costs and increase yields. Amid labor challenges, rising input costs, and increasing concerns about herbicide use, growers worldwide are seeking smarter, more efficient ways to farm. Carbon Robotics addresses these needs by delivering advanced AI robotic laser weeders andtractor autonomy that drives efficiencies to the global community. Learn more at carbonrobotics.com. | $27M | Series B | Sep 01, 2021 |  |
| Videon Central | Videon develops products for audio/video applications in the Global AV, Aviation, and Automotive industries. With over 30 million devices using its streaming media, DVD, and Blu-ray technology, Videon is a partner to the world technology companies and AV product developers.Its holistic approach supports customers at any stage in productdevelopment, offering expertise during ideation, design, development, manufacturing, certification, and support. All of these are done in-house, simplifying, and streamlining the process. Since its founding, Videon has achieved a number of industry firsts, including the first universal Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD player and the first optical disc Google TV. Our Android app Avia was one of the first apps to be released with support for Google Chromecast, and for weeks Avia was the most popular Android app. It’s been downloaded over a million times. Videon continues to grow and expand into new industries, and we have made the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies four times. | $7.3M | Series A | Jun 22, 2021 |  |
| Videon Labs | Videons video compute platform enables scalable, operational, affordable on-premise, in the studio, in-stadium live video solutions. | $7.3M | Series A | Jun 22, 2021 |  |
| Act-On Software | Act-On Software is a developer of a cloud-based integrated marketing platform for midsized businesses. It provides an integrated workspace to address the needs of the customer experience, from brand awareness and demand generation to retention and loyalty. With Act-On, marketers can drive better business outcomes and see higher customer lifetimevalue. | $20M | Venture - Series Unknown | Mar 18, 2021 |  |
| SheerID | SheerID is an enterprise verification platform that provides instant verification while minimizing friction and mitigating fraud. It redefines how enterprises create instant trust in the digital world.The SheerID digital verification platform instantly verifies the identity of any individual or business to ensure the integrity of exclusive offersand authenticated experiences. The company's solutions use authoritative data sources to verify credentials in real-time within an organization’s brand experience. All of these components enable enterprises to differentiate with exclusive offers and experiences that drive loyalty, reduce churn, and increase revenue over the lifetime of the customer.It was founded in 2011 and is based in Eugene, Oregon. | $64M | Series C | Nov 13, 2019 |  |
| Lytics | Lytics helps companies orchestrate more relevant marketing through the only enterprise-grade Customer Data Platform (CDP). Nestle, General Mills, Atlassian, The Economist, Heineken, and other leading companies use Lytics to choreograph one-to-one interactions across marketing channels that their customers welcome.The Lytics Customer Data Platform(CDP), the company's flagship product, was launched in October 2014. The Lytics CDP connects a company's marketing data about customers and users from multiple sources (e.g., structured and unstructured data from tools, anonymous and known profiles, and other interactions and events from the marketing stack, sales, and support databases) and creates behavior-rich user-profiles and segments (e.g., likely to churn, most active on mobile, coupon lover). These customer profiles and segments then sync with a company's marketing tools (from website personalization and ad retargeting, to email marketing and content optimization) to improve marketing campaign results and reduce inefficiencies.Many marketing technology vendors claim to offer a "customer data platform." Lytics has the only customer data platform that is easy enough for a beginner marketer to use, but technically sophisticated enough to impress software developers and data scientists. Lytics builds a profile based on unifying any fragment of customer information using sophisticated data science and conducts probabilistic matching to merge identities. The result: a rich profile of a consumer that can power one-to-one marketing in third-party martech tools, APIs, and Lytics own native execution platform.Lytics is led by marketing-technology veterans who’ve held leadership positions at Webtrends, Urban Airship, Jive, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We are headquartered in Portland, Oregon. | $35M | Series C | Feb 21, 2019 |  |
| Lytics | Lytics helps companies orchestrate more relevant marketing through the only enterprise-grade Customer Data Platform (CDP). Nestle, General Mills, Atlassian, The Economist, Heineken, and other leading companies use Lytics to choreograph one-to-one interactions across marketing channels that their customers welcome.The Lytics Customer Data Platform(CDP), the company's flagship product, was launched in October 2014. The Lytics CDP connects a company's marketing data about customers and users from multiple sources (e.g., structured and unstructured data from tools, anonymous and known profiles, and other interactions and events from the marketing stack, sales, and support databases) and creates behavior-rich user-profiles and segments (e.g., likely to churn, most active on mobile, coupon lover). These customer profiles and segments then sync with a company's marketing tools (from website personalization and ad retargeting, to email marketing and content optimization) to improve marketing campaign results and reduce inefficiencies.Many marketing technology vendors claim to offer a "customer data platform." Lytics has the only customer data platform that is easy enough for a beginner marketer to use, but technically sophisticated enough to impress software developers and data scientists. Lytics builds a profile based on unifying any fragment of customer information using sophisticated data science and conducts probabilistic matching to merge identities. The result: a rich profile of a consumer that can power one-to-one marketing in third-party martech tools, APIs, and Lytics own native execution platform.Lytics is led by marketing-technology veterans who’ve held leadership positions at Webtrends, Urban Airship, Jive, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We are headquartered in Portland, Oregon. | $14M | Series B | Apr 03, 2018 |  |
| SheerID | SheerID is an enterprise verification platform that provides instant verification while minimizing friction and mitigating fraud. It redefines how enterprises create instant trust in the digital world.The SheerID digital verification platform instantly verifies the identity of any individual or business to ensure the integrity of exclusive offersand authenticated experiences. The company's solutions use authoritative data sources to verify credentials in real-time within an organization’s brand experience. All of these components enable enterprises to differentiate with exclusive offers and experiences that drive loyalty, reduce churn, and increase revenue over the lifetime of the customer.It was founded in 2011 and is based in Eugene, Oregon. | $18M | Series B | Jan 23, 2018 |  |

10 of 41 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Arnold Venture Group](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/arnold-venture-group) — VC Fund, 5 deals together
- [Rembrandt Venture Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rembrant-venture-partners) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Steamboat Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/steamboat-ventures) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [U.S. Venture Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/us-venture-partners) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Anthos Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/anthos-capital) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Comcast Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/comcast-interactive-capital) — VC Fund, 3 deals together

## About Lighter Capital

VC Fund · Seattle, United States

Lighter Capital is a fintech company that has created a new fundraising path for early-stage tech companies. Its transparent, data-driven process provides founders with up to $2 million of non-dilutive growth capital in a fraction of the time it takes to raise from traditional sources.

5 contacts available at Lighter Capital.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Caitlin Goetze | Head of Partnerships and Community | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/caitlin-goetze |
| Erik Benson | Seed Investor, Co-Founder, Board Member | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/erik-benson |
| Jie Ji | Vice President Of Underwriting | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jie-ji |
| Jody Page | Investments | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jody-page |
| Jon Prentice | Director, Investment Team | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jon-prentice |

## Similar investors

### Similar stage
- [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 Erik Benson invest in?

Erik Benson invests primarily in Software, SaaS and Analytics startups, most often at Series A and Series B stage. Most of the 41 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 Erik Benson last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Erik Benson closed in Oct 2024. Shizune tracks 41 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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