Will Poole is a serial entrepreneur and three-decade participant in the global VC ecosystem.
He is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Capria Ventures where he also serves as the firm’s Chief AI Evangelist. He has been directly investing in startups since 1997 and developed wisdom beyond his years as he navigated the downturns of 2000 and 2008. His first institutional venture fund was raised for Capria’s predecessor Unitus Ventures, in 2012. He and his partners together manage over USD 200M AUM in companies spanning the Global South, from São Paulo to Nairobi to Bangalore to Jakarta. Their latest fund, Capria India Fund III, launched in Q2 2025 with a target size of USD 100M. Anchor investors include Raj and Indra Nooyi (former Pepsi CEO), Bill Gates (via his family office), and Godrej Industries (a prominent Indian industrial family office).
Will is also the co-author of a soon-to-be-released book, Flourishing with AI, a pragmatic guide for early- to mid-career professionals and their leaders who are looking to “make AI their ally” and navigate the turbulent organizational transformation that’s spreading across the world at an increasingly dizzying pace.
In his big tech career, Will was a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, leading several business lines, including the $13 billion Windows client business, representing ⅔ of the company profits at the time. After that role, he led the company’s efforts to tailor products to the needs of mass-market customers in emerging markets.
Will’s career started by founding two startups at the dawn of the PC era, growing a USD 200M business line in the early days at Sun Microsystems, and pioneering e-commerce at eShop, which he co-founded in 1991 and was acquired by Microsoft in 1996.
Will serves as a strategic advisor to African health systems transformer Village Reach, and as a board member of blended-finance leader Convergence Finance. He is also a Managing Director of The W Fund, a Seattle-based tech and life-sciences fund affiliated with the University of Washington.
Will received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Brown University in 1983. He lives in Seattle and is married to Janet Levinger, a tireless innovator in private and public education, board governance, and other social causes in the Pacific Northwest. They have two grown children who live in Seattle and San Francisco.
