Overview

Gender

female

Investor Type

Investment Partner

Investor Stage

Early stage Venture,Seed

Laurie Yoler is an ambitious problem-solver and prolific connector by nature, who has decades of experience operating, scaling, and advising companies from seed startups to multinational corporations.

After spending time at Accenture and PwC, Laurie worked at Visa for four years where she helped create a new division focusing exclusively on debit cards, which eventually yielded the groundbreaking Visa Check Card. Next, she was at Sun Microsystems, where she helped the company emerge as the go-to server platform for software in the internet age. Next, Laurie was a founding team member at Packet Design, focusing on incubating networking and security companies.

Laurie served as a Founding Board Member of Tesla, serving on the board of directors, and later on the board of advisors as the company went public. She also served on the board of Interactive Investor International in London through taking the company public.

She became a founding managing director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners, advising entrepreneurs, completing M&A transactions and raising funds. Laurie was also President of Qualcomm Labs and SVP of Business Development for Qualcomm, driving new innovation, and closing new strategic partnerships and joint ventures.

In addition to Zoox, Laurie currently serves on the board of directors of Bose, Church & Dwight, and the Computer History Museum, and on the advisory boards of Accenture, Platform Science, AI4All, and the Washington State Frank Fellows Entrepreneurship Program.

At Playground, Laurie is applying her decades of experience and learnings to help early-stage tech companies grow and thrive.