Andy Rachleff draws from his many years in the early stage venture capital business to co-teach Formation of New Ventures and a new course he co-developed with Bill Barnett called Aligning Start-ups with their Markets. He is primarily focused on using cases to help students develop their judgment, as he believes that is the key to their entrepreneurial success.

Andy was a General Partner of Benchmark Capital from its inception in 1995 until 2004 at which time he joined the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to teach a variety of courses on entrepreneurship. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at Stanford, he serves as trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, the Chairman of the board of overseers for its School of Engineering and Applied Science and vice chairman of its endowment investment committee. He sits on the board of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation with whom he partnered on a new award to provide funding for early career investigators to conduct high risk/high reward research to significantly impact the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He is also the CEO and co-founder of Wealthfront.

Prior to his 10 years as a general partner at Benchmark Capital, Andy spent 10 years as a general partner with Merrill, Pickard, Anderson & Eyre (MPAE). Before joining MPAE, Andy held a variety of positions in the investment industry, working as an associate at Harvest Ventures; as a portfolio manager at Lamoreaux, Glynn & Associates; and as a financial analyst at Blyth Eastman Paine Webber.

Education: MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1984; and a BS from the University of Pennsylvania, 1980.