# Mark Straub

> Mark Straub is a startup investor at Smile ID (San Francisco). See 0 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Smile ID](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/smile-identity)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstraub/
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/markstraub

Mark Straub is a startup investor at Smile ID in San Francisco. Mark Straub joined Smile Identity as CEO in 2017.Mark has been passionate about the power of market-based models to fight global poverty since he traded investment banking for micro-lending in 2006. At that time, Mark joined Lok Capital in New Delhi as an early employee and the first American. At Lok, he was instrumental in the firm’s seminalinvestment in Spandana and initiated a fellows program to support Lok’s portfolio.More recently, Mark was a member of the six person team at the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, a $300M expansion stage fund investing in category leading technology companies. At DFJ, Mark invested in world-changing entrepreneurs in e-commerce, consumer media, clean technology and aerospace aviation at companies including TrialPay, Gilt Groupe, Admob, betaworks (bit.ly), TremorVideo, Tesla Motors, BrightSource Energy, Silverspring Networks, and SpaceX.In 2011, Mark combined his passions for emerging markets, technology and socioeconomic change by joining Vinod to co-found Khosla Impact. He is honored to have the opportunity to support entrepreneurs and teams who are developing market-based solutions to poverty and believes business must play a leading role in solving the world’s most challenging social problems.Outside of work, Mark is an avid skier and foodie. He has been fortunate enough to visit 18 of India’s 28 states and foolish enough to ski within earshot of Kashmir’s line of control.

## About Smile ID

VC Fund · Oakland, United States

At Smile Identity they believe anyone should be able to prove their identity easily, anywhere in the world. Their team is made up of American and African engineers and financial services professionals with experience across global markets in highly regulated environments. They have built encryption, authentication and security solutions. They havedeveloped image processing technology from the chip level up. They have been part of security investigations and have pursued fraudsters.Having worked with, or for, telecoms, lenders, banks and startups, they know the challenges of building world class technology and they understand the needs of the African consumer and enterprise customer. They are backed by leading Silicon Valley & African investors and they have pan-African reach, with representation in the United States, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Rwanda.

4 contacts available at Smile ID.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mark Straub | CEO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/mark-straub |
| Antony Kaguara | Product Lead | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/antony-kaguara-a62d |
| Cameron Gray | VP Product & Engineering | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cameron-gray |
| William Bares | Co-founder & CTO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/william-bares |

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