Alex Taussig

Alex Taussig is a public and private company board director, venture capitalist, and business leader with more than 16 years of experience partnering with global technology companies from inception through IPO. He advises boards and executive teams on consequential decisions at the intersection of strategy, corporate finance, and emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and physical automation. He is based in San Francisco.

Alex serves as an Independent Director and strategy committee member at United Rentals (NYSE: URI), the world's largest equipment rental company and a core partner to the global construction and industrial economy. On the board, Alex contributes perspectives on product innovation, adjacent market expansion, data-driven operations, and technology transformation, applying pattern recognition from high-growth software and marketplace platforms to industrial systems operating at global scale.

In parallel, Alex is a Board Partner at Lightspeed, a global venture capital firm with more than $40 billion of assets under management. He joined Lightspeed in 2016, became Co-Head of the Consumer Practice in 2021, and has served on multiple investment and leadership committees at the firm. Over the past decade, he has deployed more than $600 million across category-defining marketplace and software platforms including Faire, Vinted, Whatnot, and Zola, and has served on numerous private company boards across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, ranging from early formation through over $1 billion in annual revenues. Previously, Alex was a Partner at Highland Capital Partners, where he backed thredUp (IPO, 2021) and Carbon Black (IPO, 2018).

Alex earned a BA in physics summa cum laude from Harvard College, an MS in materials engineering from MIT, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar (top 5%). He previously served on the Board of Trustees of Chanticleer, the world's preeminent Grammy Award-winning a cappella ensemble, where his guidance helped steer the non-profit through the coronavirus period, shifting from in-person to digital performances and music distribution.