Portfolio
A step-change on the path to AGI
Our investment in Ricursive Intelligence.
James DetweilerMichelle Delcambre
Michelle Delcambre
Executive Partner, Networks and Founder Success
"The single greatest lever in building an outlier company is who you choose to build with and the discipline to keep that bar high."
Bio
Michelle is an Executive Partner at Felicis. She leads networks, founder success, and our research lab partnerships and programming, which includes our fellows programs and sponsorships of top university labs.
She has over a decade of experience building high-growth companies. Before joining Felicis, she led Talent and People functions at Atlassian, Databricks, Okta, and Stripe designing hiring strategies, scaling People operations, and building the systems that support rapid growth. She has worked across multiple stages of scale: launching Atlassian’s U.S. recruiting function and growing the team from dozens to hundreds, helping Okta scale to 2,000 employees through their IPO, scaling Databricks from low hundreds to 2000 employees, and supporting Stripe as it expanded from under 2,000 to more than 5,000 employees.
FEATURED COMPANIES
Q&A
How do you help founders?
I help founders win. In the early days, I help founders build a world-class team by connecting them with exceptional talent, teaching them how to assess candidates, and advising on how to hire with conviction. As the company scales, I partner with founders to shape the operating cadence, executive bench and culture that compounds advantage over the long term.
If you could teach founders one lesson on building an outlier company, what would it be?
Companies are ultimately the sum of the people who build them. Founders rightly obsess over product and go-to-market but the outliers are built by founders who treat hiring as a core strategic lever, not an operational task. Strong product–market fit and distribution matter, but real advantage comes from assembling exceptional talent and creating the conditions for them to do their best work. The founders who win long term understand that every great hire compounds and every mediocre one taxes the system.
Why partner with universities?
Until very recently, there was a false paradox in investing. Founders were considered either builders or researchers. That paradigm is over: Many of the most ambitious, impressive founders (opens in new tab) we meet in AI and other frontier industries come directly from university research backgrounds. Our partnerships with universities are designed to help identify, cultivate, and support those who are interested in bridging the chasm between learning and founding. Besides driving investment pipeline, these partnerships help us stay close to research that’s ahead of the market and cultivate strong talent networks for our portfolio companies.
If you wrote a book, what would it be about?
I’d write about how networks quietly shape who gets to build, who gets backed, and who compounds. The introductions you receive and the early believers who vouch for you often determine whether potential turns into momentum. I’d love to explore how founders and institutions can design networks more intentionally so that exceptional people find each other earlier and build with greater momentum.
What’s a lesson you want to impart to your children?
If my children maintain their curiosity, then I will have succeeded as a parent. Curiosity opens doors, improves self-awareness, creates learning opportunities, allows for deeper relationships, enables empathy, and opens our eyes to things that don’t seem possible. Nothing makes me happier than when my kids ask “why?” or challenge something that seems certain.
Perspectives
