Backing entrepreneurs on their most ambitious journeys

Teddy Himler brings 15+ years of experience at Goldman Sachs, SoftBank, Comcast Ventures, and Antler to Optimist Ventures. Throughout his career, Teddy has developed deep insights into global technology trends, business models, and firm-building, with an emphasis on AI, insurance, healthcare, and industrial automation sectors. As a partner at Antler, he played a pivotal role in the firm's growth, helping to establish the global, early-stage venture capital firm as the world's most active investor by deal count. Prior to Antler, Teddy was instrumental in expanding SoftBank's presence in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. In 2018, he served as a Vice President at SoftBank Group International, launching their first NYC office from where he managed assets outside of Softbank’s Vision Fund, including Arm, Sprint, Boston Dynamics, and Brightstar, among others. From 2013, as its first West Coast hire, he served as VP of SoftBank Capital's growth fund and led the launch of its Southeast Asia strategy, working from Jakarta, alongside Alibaba and local partners. From 2018 - 2021, he service as a Principal in New York with Comcast Ventures, focused on consumer internet, robotics and fintech, including insurtech and crypto, for the corporate venture capital platform. He started his career as an investment banking analyst in Technology, Media & Telecom in the San Francisco office of Goldman Sachs. He holds a B.A. degree in Government and Economics from Harvard University. He has backed 5 unicorns at seed or A stages and was an investment leader or deal team member in landmark technology companies, including Kabbage, Fitbit, Dialpad, BigCommerce, Grab, Tokopedia, Cheddar, Acorns, Hippo, Blockdaemon, Madison Reed, Blockchange, ABL Space, KeyMe, Arm, Boston Dynamics, SoftBank Robotics, Sprint, Cybereason, Zola, SoFi, Airspan, OneWeb, Kindbody, Berkshire Grey, Lemonade, Brightstar, Airalo, Earlytrade, Folio, Ora Health, Endless Health and Inshur.