Amber Atherton
PartnerMore About Amber
Amber Atherton is a former founder, whose Y Combinator backed start-up was acquired by Discord. She is the author of the best selling book ‘The Rise of Virtual Communities’ published by Apress. Born in Hong Kong, Atherton began coding as a kid. Building websites, mini-games and Neopets communities. At 16, she started a popular blog, which evolved into one of Europe’s largest online jewelry marketplaces. After the merger of her first startup, she toyed around with computer vision, creating an app that generated captions for your instagram posts that immediately went viral. Amber then found fame in the UK, co-creating and briefly starring in a hit TV show. At 24, she was named by the Evening Standard as one of London’s Most Influential Londoners, by Vogue as 1 of the top 5 people in Digital Fashion, and joined Forbes’ 30 under 30 list.
In 2017 Atherton founded the community software startup, Zyper, using NLP and Computer Vision to help creators and brands find their top fans, and build private, chat based, fan communities. Atherton moved to Palo Alto to join YC, raised a seed round, and in 2021, exited the company to Discord. At Discord, Atherton was responsible for growth. Launching new verticals orbiting gaming, driving GTM in international markets and spearheading new revenue initiatives. Atherton is credited as a pioneer in the community startup space, frequently appearing on Bloomberg, CNBC, and speaking at Websummit and Davos. In 2021, Atherton met Jason Yeh and Brian Cho and bonded over a shared vision of a future shaped by games. After working as a Venture Partner for a year, Atherton joined the Patron team full time in 2023. That same year, Atherton was named by Business Insider as a Rising Star in VC. Atherton looks for founders with a deep understanding of their early user base and an unstoppable pace of execution. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, and is known to be found late at night on tumblr, hackernews or swimming laps at the pool.
“Amber has impeccable taste in people. She has a prescient view of how to optimally position her founders for key connections. She’s constantly working behind the scenes to ensure the success of your next round, even when you’re not fundraising – that is a superpower invaluable for any early stage founder to have around the table.“- Rose Xi, CEO, Tonic
“As a founder, I love working with fast and decisive partners and Amber fits that bill perfectly! From the very first meeting, she just “got it”. Amber is labelled as the Community Queen for a good reason. She helped us scale the Arya Community and make the right decisions early on. I am thankful for having an open line to Amber for everything. Whenever we need anything, Amber always knows a guy or gal she can connect you to, and you can be sure they are experts in their field. The definition of a value add VC.” – Offer Yehudai, CEO, Arya