Hayley Barna

While working towards her MBA at Harvard Business School, Barna met Katia Beauchamp and a friendship was born. So, too, was the idea of Birchbox which Barna founded with Beauchamp.[6] What began as a business plan during B-School turned into a website where they began to acquire customers interested in "an ecommerce experience focused on new product discovery."[9] They founded the company Birchbox together in 2010.[2] In 2013, she and Beauchamp won the Leadership Award At Forbes Women's Summit.[10] Barna and Beauchamp opened the first Birchbox store in 2014.[11]

As of 2015, Birchbox had received over $70 million in venture funding and had one million subscribers.[12] In August 2015,[13] Barna ceased co-leading the company as co-CEO.[2] She spent the subsequent six months as an angel investor.[13]

Although she stepped down from her role as co-CEO of Birchbox in 2015,[14][15] she remained a member of the board.[16]

After announcing it in February,[17] she joined First Round Capital as a venture partner in 2016.[13] On February 16, 2016, Barna shared a post on publishing platform medium.com about her first day at First Round stating, "I can’t think of a better place to do this than First Round, which led the seed round in my company Birchbox, and has always put founders first through good times and bad."[18] She was their first female partner.[19][3] One of her first initial First Round investments was the travel startup Collective Hotels & Retreats, with her also joining the board.[20] By late 2017, she largely focused on e-commerce startups.[16] She was on the boards of Madison Reed and RAB Lighting.[16]

By late 2017, she was organizing a working group of women in technology in New York with monthly meetings.[21] Also in late 2017, she was promoted to general partner. At that point, she had invested in companies such as Collective Retreats, Keeps, CrowdJustice, and Mirror.[13]