Loading AI tools
American businesswoman From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hayley Barna is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded Birchbox in 2009, while at Harvard Business School.[1] In 2015, Barna "stepped away from her day-to-day role" at Birchbox,[2] remaining a board member. In 2016, she became a partner of First Round Capital.[3]
Hayley Barna | |
---|---|
Born | New York |
Alma mater | Harvard University and Harvard Business School |
Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, investor |
Website | First Round |
Hayley Bay Barna was born in 1983.[4] Her parents, Eileen B. Maisel and Richard A. Barna of New York, both worked at RAB Lighting in New Jersey.[4] In high school, she was published in an international science research journal.[5] She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard[4] and has an MBA at Harvard Business School.[6]
Barna began her career shortly after she graduated from Harvard University joining Bain & Company in New York.[7] She moved to Christie's Hong Kong location where she worked in strategy and then in product management for Amazon.com.[8]
While working towards her MBA at Harvard Business School, Barna met Katia Beauchamp and a friendship was born. So, too, was the idea of Birchbox which Barna founded with Beauchamp.[6] What began as a business plan during B-School turned into a website where they began to acquire customers interested in "an ecommerce experience focused on new product discovery."[9] They founded the company Birchbox together in 2010.[2] In 2013, she and Beauchamp won the Leadership Award At Forbes Women's Summit.[10] Barna and Beauchamp opened the first Birchbox store in 2014.[11]
As of 2015, Birchbox had received over $70 million in venture funding and had one million subscribers.[12] In August 2015,[13] Barna ceased co-leading the company as co-CEO.[2] She spent the subsequent six months as an angel investor.[13]
Although she stepped down from her role as co-CEO of Birchbox in 2015,[14][15] she remained a member of the board.[16]
After announcing it in February,[17] she joined First Round Capital as a venture partner in 2016.[13] On February 16, 2016, Barna shared a post on publishing platform medium.com about her first day at First Round stating, "I can’t think of a better place to do this than First Round, which led the seed round in my company Birchbox, and has always put founders first through good times and bad."[18] She was their first female partner.[19][3] One of her first initial First Round investments was the travel startup Collective Hotels & Retreats, with her also joining the board.[20] By late 2017, she largely focused on e-commerce startups.[16] She was on the boards of Madison Reed and RAB Lighting.[16]
By late 2017, she was organizing a working group of women in technology in New York with monthly meetings.[21] Also in late 2017, she was promoted to general partner. At that point, she had invested in companies such as Collective Retreats, Keeps, CrowdJustice, and Mirror.[13]
Barna is based in Manhattan,[22] New York.[16] During her time at Harvard Business School she met her husband, Fredrik Vik Maroe. They wed in 2014 at a private estate located in Staatsburg, New York.[4]
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.