Sam Smith-Eppsteiner

Sam Smith-Eppsteiner is a partner at Innovation Endeavors.

When it comes to investing, Sam gravitates toward ideas that leverage emerging technology, growing datasets, and accelerating learning cycles to improve real-world infrastructure. She’s interested in transportation, logistics, construction, and food & agriculture. Sam is eager to partner with founders who are taking new approaches to alleviate some of humanity’s most difficult challenges in these spaces.

Sam has experience across multiple industries, from grocery to semiconductors to agriculture, and wide-ranging functions, from product development and market research to pricing to sales strategy.

This is Sam’s second tenure with Innovation Endeavors. She was previously with the firm from 2015-2017 and she worked closely with Plenty, ClearMetal, Citrine, Fabric, Canvas, and Vicarious Surgical. Her insights on food and agriculture were instrumental in shaping the firm’s first ecosystem, Farm2050.

Previously, Sam was a management consultant for Bain & Company in San Francisco, where she worked on strategy, cost assessment, and M&A for clients across tech, retail, food, and private equity. While at Bain she led its non-profit consulting group Inspire, Inc. in San Francisco, where she advised cleantech and education organizations in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Sam also worked as a Product Manager at social enterprise Kigali Farms in Rwanda where she worked to increase farmer income and fight malnutrition.

Sam holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she worked as a Product Manager at an autonomous vehicle company and a medical research AI startup. She also mapped a strategy for the future of work in Missouri. In addition, Sam holds a BA in Political Science from Stanford University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

Sam lives in San Francisco. In her spare time, you can find her hiking among Redwoods, attempting a new yoga posture, or perfecting her kale salad recipe.