Erik Benson

Erik has helped build seed- and early-stage technology startups in the Pacific Northwest since joining Voyager in 1998. He currently sits on the board of directors of Chirpify, Lighter Capital, Lytics, SheerID, Shiftboard and Uplevel. Erik also helps support the firm’s investments in Candidate, Imperative, Sound Commerce and Stackery.

Erik was previously responsible for Voyager's investments in Anova Data (acquired by Ribbon Communications), aQuantive (IPO, then acquired by Microsoft), Blue Box (acquired by IBM), Capital Stream (acquired by HCL Technologies), Covario (acquired by Dentsu Aegis), Elemental Technologies (acquired by Amazon), Kryptiq (acquired by Surescripts), MakeTV (acquired by LTN Global), RioSEO (acquired by Binary Fountain) and Skyward (acquired by Verizon).

Prior to joining Voyager, Erik was CEO of Mimix, a Seattle-based pioneer in motion capture software for the video game industry. He began his career in loan trading, high yield and acquistion finance with Chemical Banking Corporation (now JP Morgan Chase) in New York City.

Erik has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Pacific Lutheran University, where he currently serves on the board of regents and chairs the investment committee. He was born and raised on a crop farm in Washington State (Skagit Valley).