When I joined Norwest, Portfolio Success was more a response to recurring founder and investor needs than a defined platform. As we worked alongside CEOs, management teams, and our investors, we kept hearing that companies wanted more than capital. They were looking for trusted guidance, experienced operators, and practical resources to help them grow.
Two decades later, I am incredibly proud of what that platform has become. Our team, made up of more than 23 in-house professionals and complemented by a Senior Advisor Network of over 60 seasoned leaders, are all focused on helping our portfolio companies scale and succeed.
AI has fundamentally reshaped the kind of support our CEOs and founders need. In just a few years, we’ve watched their questions shift in real time. For example, GTM strategy, talent acquisition, and pricing are still central, but AI is reframing how leaders think about these decisions and more, and our guidance has evolved alongside them.
That is why we are delighted to welcome Ken Yagen as Product, AI & Technology Operating Executive and Principal, and Bryan Wise as Chief Information Officer and Principal. Both bring complementary, operator‑led perspectives that will help us continue to evolve how we invest, grow, and deliver value to our portfolio, along with the hands-on experience our companies need.
Meet Ken Yagen: Bringing Deep Product & AI Expertise to Portfolio Companies
Ken Yagen joins Norwest with a track record of helping companies apply AI in ways that create value. He partners closely with the investment and Portfolio Success teams to advise portfolio companies on product strategy, AI enablement, technology diligence, talent strategy, and organizational design. He will also continue to expand our AI and product leadership community, including the Norwest Operator Collective and Senior Advisor Network. It’s a role that sits at the intersection of operator and advisor, equal parts hands-on partner and community builder.
“CEOs and leadership teams today are navigating constant change — new models, new tools, and new risks. What drew me to Norwest is the opportunity to work alongside them across that journey, helping apply AI in ways that are practical and tied to measurable business outcomes. I’m excited to empower teams to move quickly while building on the right foundations.”
— Ken Yagen, Product, AI & Technology Operating Executive and Principal, Norwest
Most recently, Yagen served as Chief Product Officer at CData, where he focused on advancing AI-enabled product capabilities and improving customer value and operational efficiency. Prior to that, he spent six years as SVP of Value Creation at Warburg Pincus, partnering with portfolio companies on product, technology, and AI-driven growth. He has also held senior leadership roles at MuleSoft, Box, and Symphony, where he helped scale enterprise platforms and build high-performing teams.
Meet Bryan Wise: Chief Information Officer and Principal
Bryan Wise has spent more than 30 years helping technology organizations scale, and he joins Norwest as Chief Information Officer and Principal with a clear sense of how that experience can serve a new kind of mission.
As CIO and Principal, he will lead Norwest’s global technology infrastructure and strategic initiatives, with a focus on connecting technology, business, and operations. He works closely with Amanda Widjaja, Vice President and Head of Data at Norwest, and our robust Data and Engineering team to accelerate AI adoption, enhance internal processes, and share AI enablement best practices across our portfolio. For portfolio companies, that means a partner who understands how technology decisions made internally can directly accelerate and impact how they do business.
“CIO roles in venture and growth equity have traditionally focused on internal systems. What excites me about Norwest is the opportunity to take a more integrated, forward-looking approach, leveraging AI and data not just to run the firm, but to directly inform how we invest and support our portfolio companies.”
— Bryan Wise, Chief Information Officer and Principal, Norwest
Most recently, as CIO at 6sense, he led business technology, security, and business operations, helping drive AI transformation and align execution to top-line growth. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at GitLab, Snowflake, and DocuSign. At GitLab, he helped build the systems and processes that supported a successful IPO. At Snowflake, he was the first VP of IT, scaling enterprise systems and global infrastructure during a period of hypergrowth from 400 to 2,000 employees.
A Platform Built for This Moment
Over the past decade, we have been building a growing ecosystem of resources, expertise, and community to help portfolio companies navigate the AI era. Here is what that looks like today. Our Data and Engineering team works closely with the investment team and portfolio companies to surface insights, build AI-ready infrastructure, and share learnings across the portfolio. It is the technical backbone of how we apply AI inside the firm and bring those best practices to the companies we back.
Our Senior Advisor Network connects portfolio leaders with seasoned functional experts and operators across Go-To-Market, HR, Finance, Operations, Pricing, Product, AI, and Technology. The network has doubled in size over the last year alone, drawing in AI and product leaders from Google, Meta, Salesforce, Airbnb, LinkedIn, and beyond — all bringing unmatched expertise to help our companies accelerate growth and scale with confidence.
The Norwest Operator Collective brings together 90+, Data, CISO, CIO, and CXO leaders advancing dialogue on applied AI, agents, governance, and scale, fostering the kind of peer connections that help portfolio leaders cut through complexity and move faster.
Accelerate pairs early-stage entrepreneurs with Entrepreneurs in Residence and the broader Norwest incubation ecosystem to help them move from idea to product, and scale faster through mentorship, research, and hands-on resources.
We also host more than 60 workshops, webinars, and events per year, providing dedicated spaces for portfolio leaders to come together and work through the practical challenges of deploying AI in their businesses.
Ken and Bryan are stepping into that ecosystem as the connective tissue between it all, bringing the operator credibility and technical depth to help our portfolio companies go further, faster. No matter the stage or market, their expertise will help the portfolio deploy AI to ship faster, operate more efficiently, strengthen security and compliance, and unlock new levels of leverage across their organizations.
Deeper Expertise for a Faster-Moving World
Across 65 years and more than 700 investments, Norwest has backed companies at the forefront of major technology waves. Today, that includes AI-native leaders such as Gong, VAST Data, LlamaIndex, Qualified (acquired by Salesforce), You.com, Nimble, Generalist AI and many others helping define the next era of software and infrastructure. We have always believed the best thing we can do for our CEOs and founders is show up with the right people at the right time.
At Norwest, this is a part of our Invited Guest approach, being abundantly available, responsive to what portfolio teams need, and proactive about where we can add value, without overstepping. As operators who have been in the seat, made the hard calls, and come out the other side with firsthand perspectives to share, that is exactly what Ken and Bryan bring to our platform.
As we continue to grow this team and our value creation offering, I am more excited than ever about what we are building together with our portfolio companies. The tools are changing fast, the questions are getting harder, and we are ready for all of it.
