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Former Twitter M&A executive Jess Verrilli is headed to the Google-backed venture capital firm GV to become the firm’s newest general partner.
Yes, you’ve heard this before.
That’s because Verrilli, who was at Twitter for most of the past nine years, actually left Twitter in 2015 to join GV, then called Google Ventures. She was there just a few months before Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company as CEO, and gave Verrilli a call.
By the time Verrilli left Twitter again late last year, she was VP of corporate development and had seen virtually every Twitter acquisition in company history.
“I was in the trenches with founders in these critical moments trying to figure out what the next chapter of their business looked like, what the next chapter of the company looked like, what the next journey for them professionally would be,” Verrilli said in an interview with Recode this week. “I love that work. I think it’s a total privilege, honestly, to be able to do that.”
The folks at Google Ventures were sad to see her go but understood it’s hard to turn down a call from Dorsey.
“She got a phone call that I think few people beyond myself could truly understand and relate to, and it was that phone call from a founder,” said David Krane, GV’s CEO and managing director who has been at Google for more than 17 years. “Jack called her and said, ‘I’m coming back, and your work here is not done. I need you back in the boat.’”
While at Twitter, she was particularly involved in the acquisition of livestreaming app Periscope in early 2015. Google Ventures was an investor.
Now Verrilli will help make those kinds of investments on behalf of the fund, where she will be GV’s only female investing partner. She’ll focus on consumer technology, but says she’s also interested in emerging technology like cryptocurrencies.
As an angel investor — Verrilli is a co-founder of the women’s investing group #Angels, which she founded with a number of other female Twitter execs back in 2015 — she has invested in more than 20 companies on her own. She also wants to use her new seat as a female partner to help get more women into tech and investing. Verrilli said that the #Angels group has hosted more than a dozen events for female entrepreneurs over the past three years, and that’s going to continue.
“I’m excited that GV is supportive of me continuing to spend some time continuing to advance our mission of getting women on the cap table of successful startups,” she added. “There’s something really exciting going on right with networks of women in the industry that are just sharing knowledge, building community and helping promote and advance one another.”
Verrilli will start at GV in mid-May.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
