Artico Search Completes Search for Cowboy Ventures

January 30, 2025 – Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor, and Matt Meyer of Artico Search have assisted in the recruitment of Caroline Duffy as a partner in the investment team at Cowboy Ventures. “Caroline embodies Cowboy values, especially in understanding and practicing venture as a craft; as a great student of technology, collaborator, risk taker, and empath,” the company said in a release. “We’re thrilled for Caroline to add her perspectives, experience and smarts to our team.” Ms. Duffy brings a decade of experience working with enterprises, B2B software, AI and data science to Cowboy Ventures. She has a track record and passion for partnering with special founders on a mission to modernize traditional and overlooked industries.
Ms. Duffy joins Cowboy Ventures from Construct Capital, where she developed a special talent for identifying earliest stage startups to transform traditional industries “burdened” by legacy systems; and, for finding valuable, overlooked opportunities in manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics. And years prior, she began working with technical startups as the first hire at the AI fund, working alongside AI pioneer Andrew Ng.
Cowboy Ventures is a seed-focused venture capital firm dedicated to supporting founders building technology companies. The company is based in Palo Alto, CA, and invest across the United States.
With offices in San Francisco, New York, and Austin, TX, Artico is off to one of the fastest starts among boutique search firms in recent memory. Given the billions of dollars flowing into venture capital and private equity investments, as well as the ever-present threat of cybersecurity breaches, the founders expect continued growth ahead. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor has completed over 75 CEO searches as well as partner, principal, and other CXO level assignments for the world’s most successful global investors.
Ms. Chatfield-Taylor’s team focuses on executive-level search for scale-up venture capital and private equity-firms and their portfolio. The team has deep expertise in global software, data and emerging technology businesses. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor is deeply passionate about the importance of diversifying the industry, with a full 53 percent of her placements tracked since 2019 being underrepresented executives.
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Mr. Myer is a senior search consultant at Artico, with expertise in identifying and securing talent for venture capital and private equity firms. Prior to joining Artico, he was a consultant in the private capital team at Russell Reynolds Associates, based in London. In this role, he built strong expertise in advising private equity firms on making investment professional and operating partner hires. He began his career at Alphasights.
Past Search
Last year, Artico Search assisted in the placement of Vivian Cheng as Next47’s as a partner. “A big thanks to the team at Next47,” Artico Search said. “We are grateful for the opportunity to help build a team that will invest in early and expansion-stage enterprise companies and continue to support and partner with founders.”
Artico Search Fills Position for RTP Global
Artico Search recently assisted in the recruitment of Andrea Funsten as a partner with RTP Global. Ms. Funsten becomes a partner on the U.S. investment team where her focus is on early stage investments in B2B SaaS and infrastructure. She favors categories like fintech, manufacturing, supply chain, and technologies that solve problems through the use of data, automation, and AI/ML. “Her investment thesis has a strong bias towards backing unconventional founders, and she prefers to be the first money in when others will wait and see,” RTP Global said. Ms. Funsten most recently served as a managing partner at Basecamp Fund where she built out a portfolio of over 50 companies such as Flatfile, Railway, and TripleBlind. She was on the investing team at Expa and Fika Ventures.
Based in Palo Alto, Ms. Cheng joins the team with over a decade of experience in the tech industry as both a global operator and venture investor. Her primary areas of investment focus are SaaS and AI. “She is known for her judgment and conviction-based investing, her true intellectual curiosity, and her commitment to partnering with founders,” Artico Search said. “We are so excited to see her continue to shine.”
Next47 is the U.S.-based corporate venture capital arm of German industrial conglomerate Siemens. Launched in 2016, Next47 backs software-as-a-service, enterprise and artificial intelligence technology developers. The unit focuses on companies in the U.S., Europe and Israel from series A to C rounds.
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Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media