Ben Metcalfe

Ben has a unique, demonstrable cross-discipline set of skills and is just as comfortable debugging serverless code for his Amazon Alexa as he is designing a 12-month marketing plan for a portfolio company, developing a set of user stories for a new product or brainstorming lobbying efforts to help a startup in a regulated environment. 

​

Ben has no formal education or qualifications beyond secondary school (high school).

Ben is the founder and partner of Monochrome Capital, where he primarily makes seed-stage investments in B2B startups. Areas of focus include SaaS, marketplaces, frontier technologies, and startups with a strong machine-learning, open source, or infrastructure component. 

​

Prior to establishing Monochrome Ben served as a Principle at Ridge Ventures for almost three years - sourcing and leading his own Series A deals, as well as assisting in the diligence process of other firm deals.

​

Before moving into venture, Ben was a founder of WP Engine, the world's leading WordPress Digital Experience Platform which is now a unicorn valuation startup. With over $150M in annual recurring revenue and 750+ employees across five global offices, WP Engine powers over 500K websites belonging to the world's premier brands and Fortune 500 companies. Ben led marketing and open source ecosystem strategy. 

​

Ben also served as Head of Revolution, Uber's public policy innovation team, which he created and led while he was a Senior Product Manager. Uber Revolution developed several successful activism campaigns and also launched Beethoven, Uber's acclaimed program and product features for deaf and hard-of-hearing drivers. 

​

He began his career as a software engineer at the prestigious BBC News Website at the age of 18, later moving on to design and running the BBC's developer platform. He took a similar role at MySpace upon relocating from his native London to San Francisco in 2006.

As a member of Class 23, Ben served his fellowship at Ridge Ventures