You lead.
We empower.

Meet the team that will be here to support and empower you every step of the way.

Core Team

Joe Montana
Managing Partner
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Joe Montana
Managing Partner

A proven leader on and off the field, Joe has been a major player in the Venture Capital world since his retirement from professional football in 1994. In 1998 he co-founded HRJ Capital, where he was an acting partner until 2004. At his departure, HRJ Capital was managing over $900M and investing across venture funds, leverage buyouts, hedge funds and real estate. In 2005, Joe co-founded Modern Bank, where he served as a board member until 2010. During this time, Joe began angel investing under the mentorship of Ron Conway, championing companies like Pinterest, DropBox, Weave, and House Spirits, known best for its Aviation Gin. In 2015, Joe turned his passion for investing into Liquid 2 Ventures, LLC and built the core team he continues to lead today.

Michael Ma
Partner
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Michael Ma
Partner

Michael started his career as a business analyst for Sears Holding company’s internal turnaround strategy group. He then started TalkBin, a business messaging platform used by companies such as Crate & Barrel, Philz Coffee, etc. TalkBin went through Y Combinator and Google acquired it in 2011. At Google, Michael held roles leading everything from sales to product, most notably as lead mobile product manager for Google My Business, one of the world’s largest SMB apps. He graduated from Harvard Business School (2015) where he helped start Boston’s branch of First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund, and was a Foundation Capital YEP and Lightspeed Ventures summer fellow. Michael also holds a BA from Yale University (2009) and was honored in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Venture Capital list in 2017.

Michael Miller
Partner
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Michael Miller
Partner

After graduating from MSU with degrees in Physics and Philosophy, Mike’s undergraduate research at the Cyclotron opened the door for a PhD in Particle Physics from Yale and faculty positions at MIT and UW. Along the way he developed a taste for capitalism, co-founding the Y Combinator backed company Cloudant, which helped create the noSQL and Database-aaS market before being acquired by IBM in 2014. Miller then co-founded one of Silicon Valley's most active seed stage venture capital firms with Joe Montana, Michael Ma, and Nate Montana. Outside of work, Mike is the proud father of two sets of young twins with his wife Laura, and they enjoy hiking, sailing, skiing and climbing from their Pacific NW home base.

Nate Montana
Partner
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Nate Montana
Partner

Nate’s passion for the world of technology and investing in startups began in 2010 while under the guidance of some of the industry's most prominent names, including Ron Conway, Paul Graham, and Jessica Livingston. Throughout his career, Nate has held a variety of sales and business development roles at early-stage companies, including Niche, where he was an early employee. The startup achieved a remarkable $10M run-rate within a year, culminating in its acquisition by Twitter. Nate continued to make contributions to Twitter as a Program Manager before ultimately joining Liquid 2 Ventures as an inaugural team member in 2016.

Matt Mulvey
Partner
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Matt Mulvey
Partner

Matt has spent 10+ years partnering with technology founders from pre-seed through pre-IPO and was a founding member of Coatue's venture capital effort. Over his six-year tenure, Matt helped establish the firm as a premier technology practice with investments including Uber, Meituan, Spotify, Snap, Bytedance, Cerebras, UiPath, Figma, Airtable, and more. Most recently, Matt was a Partner at Eclipse Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating the digital transformation of traditional/old-line industries. Matt is an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, where he received a B.S. in finance and was a quarterback on the football team.

Shawn Larrabee
Head of Finance
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Shawn Larrabee
Head of Finance

Shawn has 15+ years’ experience in accounting for alternative investments and holds a license as a Certified Public Accountant. Prior to joining Liquid 2 Ventures, Shawn held several senior finance positions at Sorenson Capital and UMB Fund Services where he managed accounting teams, prepared financial reports and audits, performed valuation analyses of portfolio companies, and interacted regularly with limited partners. He received a Master of Accountancy from the University of Utah in 2008. Shawn has an expertise in accounting, strong leadership skills and a commitment to accuracy and efficiency. In his free time, Shawn enjoys spending time with his wife and three kids. He plays guitar and enjoys performing at church and other local events.

Elizabeth Montana-Luciano
Head of Operations
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Elizabeth Montana-Luciano
Head of Operations

Elizabeth initially joined Liquid 2 Ventures on an hourly basis as the first hire dedicated to back office operations; a role that has grown immensely since 2020. Prior to her joining Liquid 2, she spent seven years in hospitality, including positions in both management and operations within the PlumpJack Group. Conversely, Elizabeth began her career in public relations where she spent time working with both lifestyle and technology brands, including some time at Zynga leading up and through their IPO. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, with a BA in Sociology. Outside of the office Elizabeth enjoys spending time with her husband, Kenny, and their two young children at farmers markets and playgrounds all around San Francisco.

Our Advisors

Ron Conway
Advisor, Founder of SV Angel

Ron Conway is the Founder and Managing Partner of SV Angel. An active angel investor since the mid 90s, he has received wide recognition for his role in the tech ecosystem including: Vanity Fair’s 100 most influential people in the Information Age (2010), Best Angel (2009 TechCrunch Crunchies), and Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” starting in 2011. Prior to founding SVA, Ron was with National Semiconductor Corporation (1973-1979), Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO (1979-1990), and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (1991-1995). Ron is an advocate for civic engagement, immigration reform, racial equity, and gun safety. He is founder and Chairman of sf.citi and a co-founder of FWD.US, and is working diligently on efforts to solve systemic racial inequity and to support founders of color, especially through the launch of Slauson and Co. Philanthropically, Ron is a member of the Giving Pledge and Board Member of the Salesforce Foundation, and a major donor and advisor to many more organizations (see full bio here).

Jessica Livingston
Advisor, Co-Founder of Y Combinator

Jessica Livingston is the co-founder of Y Combinator (YC) an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 4,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Stripe and Twitch. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was more than $600 billion by January 2023. Jessica was previously VP of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness, where she managed an award-winning rebranding of the company. She is the author of Founders at Work (2007), a book of interviews with startup founders, and host of The Social Radars podcast. She has a BA in English from Bucknell.

Paul Graham
Advisor, Co-Founder of Y Combinator

Paul Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator (YC) an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 4,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Stripe and Twitch. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was more than $600 billion by January 2023. Paul is the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004). In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb, the first SaaS company, which in 1998 became Yahoo Store. In 2002 he discovered a simple spam filtering algorithm that inspired the current generation of filters. He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.

Qasar Younis
Advisor, CEO of Applied Intuition

Qasar Younis is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the former COO of Y Combinator. He left Y Combinator in March 2017 to start Applied Intuition, a technology company that is building advanced softwares and infrastructure tools for autonomous systems. 

Younis started his career as an engineer at GM and then Bosch in Japan. After Harvard Business School he started Cameesa.com. In 2010, he moved to the San Francisco bay area to start his second startup TalkBin, a platform for customers to send messages to businesses. The company graduated from Y Combinator and was acquired by Google in 2011. He has an engineering degree from Kettering University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.