Sydney Thomas

Sydney is the Founder and General Partner of Symphonic Capital – a venture capital firm that invests in companies making life better for the 99%. She has focused on this thesis for the past 6 years and has created a distributed network invested in this space by founding a podcast where she profiles these companies, launching a newsletter where she writes about these companies, and hosting events where she organizes people who care deeply about the impact these companies can have on our society.

She participates in several extracurricular activities to increase diversity in tech and level the playing field more broadly. She is on the strategy committee of BLCK VC, on the Board of Colorwave, and on the Advisory Board of Invanti – a startup generator in the midwest. This work awarded her a Black VC’s Making an Impact designation and an article in Marie Claire.

She is deeply involved in her community in Oakland. In 2020, she was honored to receive the Champion of Justice Award from Esq. Apprentice, an Oakland-based nonprofit she supports that creates alternative pathways to a legal career. She was also appointed by the Mayor to serve as a Commissioner for the City of Oakland’s Public Safety and Services Commission.

Sydney joined Precursor almost 6 years ago and built the software and systems that grew the firm from a Solo Operating GP with 10 investments to a 3-person team with 200+ investments. She grew from Assoc to Principal and now works there part-time as a Venture Partner. Before joining Precursor, Sydney gained experience working in technology startups in business development and product marketing. She has done everything from writing federal SBIR grants to managing customer success teams.

Prior to her work in tech, she served in the Bloomberg Administration in NYC. Over the course of her tenure, she drafted federal legislation, negotiated a multi-million-dollar contract, and received a full-ride scholarship to her business school of choice.

Sydney graduated from Berkeley with her MBA and Duke with her BA.