Team

Shawn Merani

Founder & Managing Director

Shawn Merani is the Founder and Managing Partner of Parade Ventures, a pre-seed & seed stage-focused venture capital firm.

Previously, Shawn was a co-founder and partner at Flight Ventures, investing in early stage software, internet and mobile companies across a variety of sectors. Additionally, he has invested in select later stage companies. Shawn’s investments include Dollar Shave Club (acquired by Unilever), Sapho (acquired by Citrix), Moveworks, Trusted Health, Clubhouse, Side, Plastiq, Jumpcloud and others.

As an operator, Shawn was a founding partner of Liquidnet’s Private Shares marketplace, which enabled over 750 of the world’s leading asset managers to invest in high-growth, pre-IPO companies. He grew the marketplace to $150MM+ GMV in the first two years. Prior to Liquidnet, Shawn was Senior Director of Business Development at ReachLocal. Shawn has a BA in Economics and a BS in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management. Shawn enjoys spending time with his family, riding his Peloton, winning at fantasy sports and supporting the Cal Bears.

Jeff Bonforte

Venture Partner

Jeff Bonforte recently left Yahoo, where he was the SVP of Search, Data, Email and Research. Over his five year tenure, Jeff had global responsibility for some of the company's most iconic products, and established a reputation as a leading product leader in the company, overseeing the turnaround of Yahoo Mail to become the company's highest performing business group.

Jeff joined Yahoo through the $70M acquisition of Xobni in 2013, where he was CEO for five years. He was also CEO of Gizmo5, a VOIP startup, acquired by Google in 2008. Prior to Gizmo5, he was founder of three other startups, including online storage pioneer, i-drive.com.

In addition to his startup work, Jeff is an active angel investor with over 70 investments. He is a board member at Playworks, a national charity providing safe and inclusive play for hundreds of thousands of low-income students. He is a father to three young children. He graduated magna cum laude from UCLA. He has over 450 skydives and is team owner of Aston Martin Racing North America.

Ravi Patel

Investment Associate

Ravi Patel is an Investment Associate at Parade Ventures. Previously, Ravi was a Software Engineer at Magellan Health where he built and designed a pain management application. He has also held Product and Software roles at various startups. Ravi has a BA in Computer Science and a BA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. In his spare time, Ravi likes to read about new technologies, play sports, and spend time with his friends and family.