Tim Smith is a Partner at Bee Partners. Since his first incorporated startup at age 15, he has been the founder or on the founding team of eight companies, and advised hundreds more.

Tim's Latest

Crowdbotics Offers Managed App Development for All–and Jobs for Global Engineers

How Bee Partners Used Crowdbotics to Become the "Smartest Small VC in the Business"

About Tim

After his dual undergraduate degrees from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (Management Science and Marketing), Tim entered consulting as a Manager with then Ernst & Whinney (now Ernst & Young) focused on IT clients including Apple, HP, Borland, and others. He was instrumental in creating E&Y’s Manufacturing Resource Center in San Jose in the late 1980’s.

After departing E&Y, Tim founded Red Sky Interactive in San Francisco, one of the five earliest high-profile interactive agencies in the United States. Tim, as CEO, led Red Sky for almost 10 years, growing the company from solo founder to close to 600 employees and 8 offices world-wide. Red Sky was responsible for a number of milestone projects in the industry including Nike’s first website, the first interactive ad banner, and ultimately recognition as the third most awarded interactive design agency in the world in 2001. Red Sky was acquired in 2001 by Agency.com, based in New York.

Tim was a multi-decade member of ad-tech’s Advisory Board, the first interactive board member of New York’s One Club, and long-time Venture Advisor at Berkeley’s SkyDeck accelerator, where he has led the Design & Rapid Prototyping component of the Berkeley Accelerator Method (BAM) for over seven years.  Tim is a frequent public speaker on software, design and frontier technology.

With an extensive operational appreciation of ground-up venture creation and the requisite empathy, creativity, and passion that is needed to fuel early stage growth, founders see Tim as “one of them” and view him as a trusted partner and advocate.

Tim lives in Marin county with his hiking, surfing, dog-friendly family, and may be the only person you know who has had his car repaired by Steve Jobs.

Connect with Tim on LinkedIn.