Peter Cowen

Sutton Capital

Peter Cowen is a technology investment banker and a mentor and angel investor in tech-enabled outsourced companies. Peter is the Founder and Managing Director of Sutton Capital, a Los-Angeles based technology investment bank that advises on mergers, acquisitions and large capital raises. He has led dozens of deals totaling over $500 million in value. Peter has been an angel in over 50 early stage deals and an LP in a half dozen seed VC funds. His investments include MindBody (NSDQ: MB), Style Haul (sold to Bertelsmann), Cognition (sold to Nuance NSDQ: NUAN), Pulse Biosciences (NSDQ: PLSE), Winc, ESalon, and Joany. He also currently serves on the board of 3 venture-backed firms: Leaseville, 17Hats and ShipHawk. Peter founded the largest annual SoCal tech conference focused on educating entrepreneurs in understanding deep customer engagement called the Recurring Revenue Conference, with over 600 attendees in 2018. He has also been on the UCLA Anderson faculty for the past 10 years teaching the fully-employed and executive MBAs. Previously, Peter co-founded three companies that were sold to public companies or a strategic partner: one in computer networks, one in biometrics and one in logistics optimization. Peter has an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Articles by Peter Cowen

How Shaun Merritt Vibe-Coded Karrot.ai As A Solo Builder

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Shaun Merritt, cofounder and CTO of Karrot.ai, a LinkedIn ABM tool. Shaun was kind enough to share a comprehensive breakdown of how...

7 Steps to Build a Product That Sells Itself

Learn the 7 steps to product-led growth (PLG) to build a product that sells itself. Drive activation, boost conversions, and scale efficiently with Wes Bush from ProductLed....

The Founder’s Mental Health Playbook: What I Learned After Nearly Burning Out

A hard-won guide to staying mentally healthy while building a startup I founded Stitcher, the podcast platform, in 2007 and ran it for seven years until we sold in 2014....

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for Early Stage Companies

In our latest session from the Mucker Growth Series featuring Ethan Smith from Graphite, we explored AEO, a significant new approach for optimizing visibility in AI-driven search, particularly relevant as...

Startup Guide to AI Visibility: Be the Brand ChatGPT Recommends

Introduction Today, users aren’t just searching on Google. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI systems for advice. AI visibility is the new frontier of brand awareness....

Practical Uses of AI & Automation for Startup Operations

In a recent Mucker Growth Series session, we invited Rock Vitale, Founder & CEO of Easie, to share how he’s helped early-stage teams move from manual, fragmented workflows to streamlined,...