Mark Straub

Mark Straub joined Smile Identity as CEO in 2017.Mark has been passionate about the power of market-based models to fight global poverty since he traded investment banking for micro-lending in 2006. At that time, Mark joined Lok Capital in New Delhi as an early employee and the first American. At Lok, he was instrumental in the firm’s seminal investment in Spandana and initiated a fellows program to support Lok’s portfolio. More recently, Mark was a member of the six person team at the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, a $300M expansion stage fund investing in category leading technology companies. At DFJ, Mark invested in world-changing entrepreneurs in e-commerce, consumer media, clean technology and aerospace aviation at companies including TrialPay, Gilt Groupe, Admob, betaworks (bit.ly), TremorVideo, Tesla Motors, BrightSource Energy, Silverspring Networks, and SpaceX. In 2011, Mark combined his passions for emerging markets, technology and socioeconomic change by joining Vinod to co-found Khosla Impact. He is honored to have the opportunity to support entrepreneurs and teams who are developing market-based solutions to poverty and believes business must play a leading role in solving the world’s most challenging social problems. Outside of work, Mark is an avid skier and foodie. He has been fortunate enough to visit 18 of India’s 28 states and foolish enough to ski within earshot of Kashmir’s line of control.