Square Peg names James Tynan as partner

Former Startmate boss James Tynan has been named a partner at Square Peg, three years after signing on at the VC.

Tynan joined Square Peg in 2020 from the Startmate accelerator program, which also makes pre-seed investments in the startups involved.

Since then he’s led investments for Square Peg in companies including culture meat venture Vow, 3D infrastructure modelling software platform Neara, New Zealand car parts marketplace Partly and digital business card Blinq.

Tynan returned to Australian from Silicon Valley, where he helped scale Khan Academy to the world’s largest edtech organisation having previously worked at McKinsey & Co in Australia.

“It feels amazing to have the endorsement of this great team. Going forward my aim is the same: I want to help exceptional founders solve huge problems,” Tynan said.

“We are facing some of the largest global crises of our generation – whether that’s rapid changes to our climate, the spiralling impacts of chronic illness on our healthcare systems or the transformational impacts of AI.

“In each of these areas I believe technology founders and venture capital have an important role to play. Over the next decade, we’ll see some of the world’s largest technology companies being built to address these global problems, and I’m excited to help founders build them.”

Square Peg cofounder and partner Paul Bassat praised Tynan for his “deep empathy for the startup journey” and founders.

“We consistently hear from founders that a key reason for their decision to partner with Square Peg is their desire to work with James,” he said.

“We’re really excited about James’ appointment to the partnership and the energy and expertise that James has, and will continue to bring to the Square Peg team.”

Square Peg was founded in 2012 and has investing teams in Sydney, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, and Singapore.