Ken Elefant

Ken Elefant is a Partner at Sorenson Capital and a member of SmartSuite's board of directors.

Before joining Sorenson, Ken was Managing Director at Intel Capital and Vice President at Intel Corporation, where he led the software and cybersecurity groups and invested in several market-leading companies, including AtHoc, Prolexic, Forescout and DocuSign, among many others.

Prior to Intel Capital, Ken was a Founding General Partner at Opus Capital. While at Opus, he served on the board of a number of companies, one of the earliest of which was Spock Networks, an investment he cites as one of the most transformative experiences of his early career, particularly because he endured the global financial crisis with the team—facing adversity, armed with an incredible product and amazing team, Ken lived to tell the tale.

“I remember working at Claris Corp, Apple’s software subsidiary, right after undergrad.  There were so many talented people, it was crazy.  I was a sponge, learning everything I could. I see the same learning capability within so many of our founders.”

Ken received an MBA from Harvard Business School, holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of Business, and is a Kauffman Fellow. As a former college wrestler, Ken loves to see similar determination in founders – while wrestling is an individual sport, wrestlers help each other become a very strong team, a principle widely applicable to startups. Ken seeks founders with extreme domain experience for the problem they want to solve, and those who are introspective enough to identify the types of people they need to surround themselves with to become successful.

One such founder was Idan Tendler at Bridgecrew, who found his perfect product-market fit in cloud security long after tweaking the original thesis. Idan and his team tested, measured, and kept pivoting their strategy until they got it right. Ken, having borne witness to the amazing brainstorming by the team, loves emulating the formula with other companies.

“I always like seeing the good people win. Unfortunately, in security, that’s hard to do. The bad people only need to break into an enterprise in one area, but we need to protect the entire surface area. I’m so excited when I see entrepreneurs who also want to make enterprises more secure. It’s the right thing to do.”

To Ken, success is multilateral: on the one hand, it’s about making something that lasts and he’s passionate about longevity for Sorenson, for his portfolio companies, and for his relationships with people. On the other hand, Ken is extremely competitive. He’s a man who hates to lose even more than he loves to win, and in the end, his favorite thing about working with portfolio companies is the ability to make win/win contacts, whether that be from customers, channel partners, or strategic partners.