Haystack | Team

Backing outlier founders at the earliest stages.

Semil Shah

Semil founded Haystack in 2013 and has been a prolific early stage investor over the last decade, including early investments in companies like DoorDash, Instacart, Figma, Hashicorp, and Applied Intuition. Prior to investing, Semil held various product and operations roles at early-stage startups. Semil was named to the Forbes Midas Seed List in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, as well as to the Forbes Midas List in 2026.

Divya Dhulipala

Divya invests across stages at Haystack. She is additionally responsible for the firm’s capital formation efforts, as well as for its annual industry conference, The Alignment Summit.

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