Meredith Kendall Maines

As Lightspeed’s first Marketing Partner, Meredith leads strategic Marketing, Brand and Communications across the firm and its partners, and serves as an advisor to portfolio company founders and their executive teams.

Having sat inside and outside of high-growth companies throughout her 20 year career spanning tech, media and entertainment, she enjoys working alongside entrepreneurs to support them on brand-building, storytelling, messaging, executive communications, crisis communications and reputation, and media relations.

It’s a job that suits her well. Like the company-building process itself, Meredith draws on her skill set and experiences to produce work greater than the sum of its parts.

Meredith attended Stanford University where she earned Bachelor’s degrees in English and Music Composition, and a Master’s in Communications under the guidance of Professor Clifford Nass, renowned authority on human-computer interaction. A highlight was spending her junior year abroad at Oxford University, and a summer internship at Cisco.

As part of the global communications and public affairs team at Google HQ, she worked on everything from launching data centers to search products, to Google’s first TV Ads product. Getting her feet wet in TV led her to joining American Idol as a talent manager on seasons seven and eight when it was the highest rated show on television. She was later recruited by Hulu, and during her time as Head of Communications at the on-demand video service, the company developed its first original series, received its first Emmy nomination, and grew its US subscriber base to over 6 million users.

After three years at Hulu, it was back to the Bay Area to consult with founders while at boutique communications consultancy The Pramana Collective. She also got her feet wet as an investor and board advisor to startups including Color Genomics and Surf Air.

It was the excitement of early-stage investing that led Meredith to Lightspeed in 2016, and the ever-changing landscape of the startup world at large that gets her going each day. “The stakes are high when a company is young and building, and therefore the ability to have a big impact is very real,” she says.

Outside of the office, Meredith is an avid amateur equestrian and loves spending time with her husband and two young children in Santa Barbara.