Chip Meakem

Co-founder & Partner

Chip is a co-founder and Partner of Tribeca Venture Partners.

Chip has been operating and investing in NYC tech companies since 1996 and has been a founder, operating executive or lead investor of several leading NYC companies including 24/7 Media, N2K, Massive Inc., and AppNexus.

Prior to co-founding Tribeca Venture Partners, Chip was an active NYC VC at both Kodiak Venture Partners and DFJ Gotham. Chip serves on several Boards of Directors and manages investments including BetterCloud, Hive, Table22, PebblePost, Spiffy,  and Toggle.

Chip’s previous investments include Appnexus (acq. by AT&T); clypd (acq. by AT&T: Ingenio (acq. by AT&T); Jornaya (acq. by Verisk): Massive Inc. (acq. by Microsoft); Q-Link Technologies (acq. by Adobe Systems); TRA Global (acq. by Tivo) and Where Inc. (acq. by eBay). Chip was also a personal seed investor in FreeMarkets Inc., which went public and peaked at a $12B market cap.

Before moving to the venture side, Chip was a founding employee at Interactive Imaginations, where he started the Commonwealth Network (launched in Q1 1996), one of the Internet’s first advertising networks, building it from a concept to top 10 media property. Interactive Imaginations eventually became 24/7 Media and went public in 1998. Chip also worked at N2k and was responsible for strategic distribution partnerships for the leading music e-tailer.

Chip holds a B.A. from Cornell University, where he was a member of the varsity basketball team and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

“When I was a kid, I built a treehouse. It started with a small deck about 20 feet up in a big willow tree. Then I expanded up and built three more platforms in that tree as high as 60 feet up. Then I rigged up a homemade zip line connecting to another tree about 50 feet away and built in that tree. A few years later, I had 15 platforms and decks in 5 trees interconnected with a network of rope bridges and zip lines. I stopped when I hit high school and ran out of time. I have always liked to build stuff.”

five Things

  • My summer job in high school and college was mucking stalls and cutting pastures on a horse farm.

  • I love fishing in all its forms including my favorite, ice fishing.

  • My wife says I’m a pretty good, though horribly repetitive shower singer.

  • My career stats from Cornell Basketball are not impressive.

  • I coached every youth sports team my three kids ever played.