Erik Rannala
Co-Founder & Partner
Prior to forming Mucker Capital, Erik was most recently at Harrison Metal Capital, where he helped lead one of the original seed-stage “micro-VC” firms in Silicon Valley.
Before Harrison Metal, Erik served as vice president of global product strategy and development at TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site. Prior to TripAdvisor, Erik held a variety of positions at eBay, including leadership of eBay’s premium features business, which grew during his tenure to over $400 million in revenue, significantly outpacing overall eBay revenue and transaction growth. Previously, Erik held leadership roles at MVP.com and Accenture, where he was a software developer in Accenture’s first practice group dedicated to Internet strategy and development. Erik earlier served at the Domestic Policy Council in the White House.
Erik holds a BS from the University of Delaware and an MBA from Duke University.
Erik can be reached at erik at mucker dot com.
Articles by Erik Rannala
How Lemming VCs Cause Venture Recessions
Following the inevitable ups and downs of the VC investment cycle, and what founders can do when it all turns cold. The “venture recession” of 2016 is in full swing....
Blue Collar VC
Four years after founding and bootstrapping Mucker Capital, we are pleased to announce the close of a new $45 million fund, Mucker III. This is our third fund, which might...
Are Apps The New Gurus? The Rise Of Self-Help Tech
The way we do everything has been turned upside down: how we read, how we communicate, how we get from point A to point B, how we eat and how...
Learning From The OG iPod
If you want to build a multibillion-dollar consumer IoT company, copy the iPod – the original IoT thingy. Most brilliant “Internet of Things” ideas are quicksand for capital unless you...
More Funding Won’t Magically Fix Your Startup
by Erik Rannala Some entrepreneurs think that (more) money will solve all their company’s problems. It won’t. Like a teenager with a million dollar allowance and an identity crisis, a...
Venture Capital Is Dead. Long Live Venture Capital.
(Guest post by my partner, Erik Rannala) There have been rumblings recently that the traditional VC model could be in danger of extinction, threatened by more contemporary investment sources such...