# Steve Blank

> Steve Blank is a seed investor at Ava backing Artificial Intelligence. See 26 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: Ava
- Total investments: 26
- Last investment: Jun 2026
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveblank
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/sgblank
- Website: http://www.steveblank.com
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sgblank

Steve Blank is a seed investor at Ava focused on Artificial Intelligence and Software. Steve Blank is the Founding Faculty - Gordian Knot Center For National Security Innovation of Stanford University. He previously worked at California League of Conservation Voters as a Board Member.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for Steve Blank: work email, personal email, work phone, personal phone and socials. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-email/steve-blank?utm_source=investor_profile

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $800k–$9.7M |
| Series A | $960k–$6.4M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Artificial Intelligence | 7 | 27% |
| Software | 6 | 23% |
| Enterprise Software | 4 | 15% |
| Education | 3 | 12% |
| Health Care | 3 | 12% |

62 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 13 | 50% |
| Series A | 5 | 19% |
| Funding Round | 3 | 12% |
| Angel | 2 | 8% |
| Series B | 2 | 8% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 19 | 73% |
| Finland | 1 | 4% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Traysar | Subterranean warfare for allied supremacy. | $25M | Seed | Jun 16, 2026 |  |
| SalesPatriot | SalesPatriot serves as an advanced back-office operating system tailored for companies within the defense sector. | $5M | Seed | Oct 26, 2025 |  |
| Usul | USUL is a modern government intelligence platform that provides software solutions. | $3.3M | Seed | May 12, 2025 |  |
| Rain Industries | Every wildfire starts small. Rain contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition with autonomous drones. | $9.7M | Seed | Sep 21, 2023 |  |
| Artera | Artera is a provider of precision medicine and develops artificial intelligence (AI) testing to customize treatments for cancer patients. It develops specialized tools to support personalized clinical care. Its test predicts therapeutic benefits and provides risk stratification. | $90M |  | Mar 21, 2023 |  |
| Valar Labs | Valar Labs makes AI to interpret solid tumors and deliver insights, so physicians and patients can make informed treatment decisions. Their AI algorithms analyze digitized pathology slides to assess spatial features, and they design transparent systems grounded in underlying biology so physicians can trust the results. | $4M | Seed | Mar 30, 2022 |  |
| Syndicate | Syndicate is a decentralized asset management platform and social network. | $800K | Seed | Jun 30, 2021 |  |
| Bot MD | Bot MD is an AI assistant for doctors. They provide hospital information to provide instant answers to doctor queries and help automate patient care. Their hospital information systems provide instant answers to call rosters, hospital directories, guidelines, drugs, and HR leave policies. | $5M | Series A | Dec 22, 2020 |  |
| Crash | Crash is a career launch platform that helps young professionals to discover their interests, build a strong profile to showcase their talent, and launch into the best early career opportunities. The company was founded in 2018 and is based in Charleston, South Carolina. | $1.1M | Seed | Sep 01, 2018 |  |
| Bot MD | Bot MD is an AI assistant for doctors. They provide hospital information to provide instant answers to doctor queries and help automate patient care. Their hospital information systems provide instant answers to call rosters, hospital directories, guidelines, drugs, and HR leave policies. | $1.6M | Seed | Aug 07, 2018 |  |

10 of 26 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Y Combinator](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/y-combinator) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Monk’s Hill Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/monk-s-hill-ventures) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [1776 Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/1776-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Andreessen Horowitz](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/andreessen-horowitz) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Boston Seed Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/boston-seed-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Catamount Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/catamount-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

## About Ava

VC Fund · San Francisco, United States

Ava develops a live captioning platform that uses AI to transcribe what people say. It is committed to total accessibility for the 466M deaf/hh worldwide.

5 contacts available at Ava.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Steve Blank | Mentor | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/steve-blank |
| Marc Frochtzweig | Vice President, Marketing & Growth | — |
| Nicolas El Baze | Investor | — |
| Pieter Doevendans | Co-Founder, COO | — |
| Skinner Cheng | Co-Founder & CTO | — |

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## FAQ

### What does Steve Blank invest in?

Steve Blank invests primarily in Artificial Intelligence, Software and Enterprise Software startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 26 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Steve Blank's check size?

Steve Blank typically joins rounds of $800k–$9.7M at Seed and $960k–$6.4M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Steve Blank participates in.

### How do I contact Steve Blank?

Public channels for Steve Blank 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 Steve Blank last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Steve Blank closed in Jun 2026. Shizune tracks 26 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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