Daniel Leff, PhD

Venture Partner

Daniel is a Venture Partner based in Globespan Capital Partners’ Palo Alto Office. He evaluates investment opportunites in a wide range of areas including Internet, digital media, systems and peripherals and consumer Internet financial services.  He also co-leads Globespan’s Energy investment practice. A former entrepreneur himself, Daniel is passionate about working at the interface of business and technology with start-up companies focused on becoming market leaders. He brings strong technical expertise, extensive investment experience, and a focused commitment to helping the firm’s entrepreneurs achieve success in a dynamically changing global marketplace. 

Daniel serves on the boards of Ampulse, Clean Cell International and Roku. He is also actively involved with a number of Globespan portfolio companies including Calisolar, Nantero, Pelican Imaging and ZeaChem.

Prior to joining Globespan in 2008, Daniel was an Executive Vice President and Managing Director at Harris & Harris Group, Inc., a publicly held venture capital company (NASDAQ:TINY). While at Harris & Harris Group, Daniel established the company’s first West Coast office and focused on investments in advanced materials, cleantech, and semiconductor-related technologies. He led Harris & Harris Group's investments in Adesto Technologies, Bridgelux, Cambrios, Cswitch, Innovalight (acquired by DuPont), Molecular Imprints, Nanogram (acquired by Teijin), Nanomix, Neophotonics (NYSE:NPTN), and Solazyme (NASDAQ:SZYM). 

In addition, over the last 10 years, Daniel has been an active Angel and individual investor in leading, private technology companies such as Bridgelux (a provider of high power, energy-efficient and cost-effective LED solutions), SandForce (the pioneer of SSD [Solid-State Drive] Processors that enable standard NAND flash deployment in enterprise, client, and industrial computing applications), and Hark (a mobile and Internet media company that enables people to create, share, and listen to sound bites online and through mobile devices).

Earlier in his career, Daniel was with Sevin Rosen Funds and Redpoint Ventures. He also previously held engineering, marketing and strategic investment positions with Intel Corporation.

Daniel earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He also received a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA, where he was an Anderson Venture Fellow. Daniel has been awarded two patents and has been published in several scientific journals.

Daniel lives in Palo Alto with his wife and two children. He enjoys exercising, reading, playing golf, traveling to tropical locales, and investing in the stock market.