PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 12, 2025 — Early stage venture capital firm True Ventures welcomed two new full-time Partners to its team: Kevin Rose and Mike Montano. Both Rose and Montano entered the True Ventures ecosystem as founders in the firm’s portfolio. Rose was funded in 2011 and Montano in 2009. Both have previously worked as Venture Partners at True. As long-time repeat entrepreneurs and large-scale operators, they bring deep experience and expertise across multiple sectors, including artificial intelligence, consumer and B2B software, and health and wellness.
Kevin Rose: A Longstanding Partnership With True
Rose’s relationship with True Ventures traces back to his early entrepreneurial days. His new role as Partner is the next step in an illustrious journey as both a multi-time founder and seed investor.
In 2004, Rose launched social news platform Digg, pioneering online content aggregation and virality. Digg attracted 38 million monthly users, becoming a mainstay of internet culture. In 2011, True backed Rose to start Milk, acquired by Google in 2012. In 2014, True funded Rose’s app incubator North, which later merged with Hodinkee, where Rose served as CEO.
Rose’s entrepreneurial streak continued when True backed his longevity and meditation apps Zero and Oak, which later became Zero Longevity Science in 2019. In 2022, True backed Rose again (for the fourth time), to start PROOF, a web3 media and technology company, which was acquired in 2024 by Yuga Labs.
Rose is also a seasoned investor, having angel-funded companies including Twitter, Square, Nextdoor, Wealthfront, and Facebook. He previously served as General Partner at Google Ventures. His work as an entrepreneur and investor has been featured on ABC Nightline News, The Jimmy Fallon Show, The Joe Rogan Experience, and The Tim Ferriss Show, and he’s appeared on the covers of Businessweek and Inc. Magazine. Rose hosts three podcasts exploring technology trends, longevity, financial well-being, and internet culture: The Kevin Rose Show, The Random Show, and Diggnation Rebooted.
Rose is now fully focused on investing at True, particularly in the sweeping AI innovation across health, consumer, and enterprise technologies and markets.
“I’m thrilled to dedicate my full attention to investing at True – this firm has played such a big role in my own journey as a founder, graciously encouraging me to tinker and build different businesses through the years,” said Rose. “Being a founder is all about riding the ups and downs of building a company, and the True team gets how to support in the most challenging moments with the kind of unconditional belief that makes all the difference. The right investors can be transformational and I’m eager to be that kind of partner for today’s builders as I put all my chips in at True.”
Mike Montano: From Founder and Engineering Leader to Investor
For Montano, returning to True is a kind of homecoming. True invested in Montano’s first startup, a social media analytics platform called BackType, in 2009. When Twitter acquired BackType in 2011, Montano joined Twitter and spent a decade scaling its engineering team, rising through leadership roles from Director to Vice President to Head of Engineering, ultimately leading a team of 3,000 and overseeing everything from mobile applications, machine learning, and data center operations.
While Montano led the engineering team, Twitter usage and revenue doubled. Additionally, he was proud to serve as the executive sponsor of Twitter’s Black Employee Resource Group, Blackbirds. As an angel investor in dozens of companies including biotech R&D platform Benchling and open source LLM platform Ollama, Montano has helped founders with product, hiring, and scaling engineering culture.
“My experience has taught me the importance of building a world-class team,” said Montano. “At Twitter I learned how to deliver at massive scale, but I also really enjoyed the early days at BackType when I worked with a small team of builders. There’s a magic that happens at that size and I’m happy to jump back into the trenches of that really early stage with founders.”
In 2023, Montano joined True as a part-time Venture Partner, and now as a full-time Partner he is particularly keen on the firm’s increase in AI investments. True has over 60 AI companies in its portfolio, and in Q4 2024, 75% of True’s new investments were AI-native.
“The pace at which technology is moving right now is something I’ve never seen before,” said Montano. “There’s a flood of talent building never-before-imagined products, and it’s a joy to work with these really hungry founders working on the biggest ideas. Our recent AI investments have spanned tools that make developers and other professionals multiply their ability and completely rethink the ways we interact with technology and devices.”
Headquartered in Palo Alto with a second office in San Francisco, True Ventures has 49 team members, including an investment team of 29, alongside finance, operations, and a platform team dedicated to community-building and portfolio support. The firm, which remains committed to pre-seed and seed-stage investments, manages over $3.8 billion, with $3.3 billion invested across more than 475 teams since True’s founding in 2005.
SOURCE True Ventures
