Rebecca Lynn

Rebecca Lynn

Co-Founder & General Partner
I love working with risk-taking, passionate founders because I learn something new from them every day. And I find it so gratifying to help them build out their go-to-market strategy, scale marketing, and nurture new channels, whether for consumer or B2B.

Rebecca works with early-stage founders to refine their product market fit and expand their go-to-market strategy. She loves helping early stage companies discover new channels for growth and make critical hires to take the company to the next inflection point.

Rebecca’s unique experience in positioning and go-to-market stems from early work at Procter and Gamble, the gold standard for consumer and brand marketing with an international lens. Here, she gained know-how in finding product-market fit, consumer messaging, and scaling companies globally. Today, the way in which consumers interact with a product or service is the number one metric that drives Rebecca’s investment decisions.

Twenty years of operational experience in fintech started with NextCard, the first online credit card company. At NextCard, Rebecca helped scale the company from 30 people to 1300 and an IPO, gaining deep expertise in credit operations, underwriting, risk, and customer acquisition. Later, at her own marketing consultancy, Rebecca worked with fintech brands like Experian and Capital One. 

Early in Rebecca’s venture career, she pursued a thesis in healthcare services, and started DC2VC in 2010, a competition to scour the US for interesting startups in healthcare. And a passion for edgetech stems from her background as a chemical engineer and her very first job, working in a nuclear research reactor.

Rebecca has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri, and a JD/MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. She serves on the board of Skydeck, the University of California, Berkeley, incubator and is a frequent lecturer at Stanford and Berkeley. Rebecca is a regular panelist at key fintech events such as Money2020, Lendit, Techcrunch and her privately hosted events (ask her).

Biography

Rebecca co-founded Canvas Ventures in 2013, spinning the firm out of Morgenthaler Ventures. Named a Woman to Watch: Senior Deal Maker by the Wall Street Journal in 2021 and a Top Woman VC by the New York Times, Rebecca has also been ranked on the Forbes Midas List 5 years in a row. Rebecca has demonstrated early and consistent conviction around fintech, digital health, and consumer products, and she brings unique operational expertise in marketing and recruiting to support her companies as a venture capitalist.

Rebecca works with early-stage founders to refine their product market fit and expand their go-to-market strategy. She loves helping early stage companies discover new channels for growth and make critical hires to take the company to the next inflection point.

Rebecca’s unique experience in positioning and go-to-market stems from early work at Procter and Gamble, the gold standard for consumer and brand marketing with an international lens. Here, she gained know-how in finding product-market fit, consumer messaging, and scaling companies globally. Today, the way in which consumers interact with a product or service is the number one metric that drives Rebecca’s investment decisions.

Twenty years of operational experience in fintech started with NextCard, the first online credit card company. At NextCard, Rebecca helped scale the company from 30 people to 1300 and an IPO, gaining deep expertise in credit operations, underwriting, risk, and customer acquisition. Later, at her own marketing consultancy, Rebecca worked with fintech brands like Experian and Capital One. 

Early in Rebecca’s venture career, she pursued a thesis in healthcare services, and started DC2VC in 2010, a competition to scour the US for interesting startups in healthcare. And a passion for edgetech stems from her background as a chemical engineer and her very first job, working in a nuclear research reactor.

Rebecca has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri, and a JD/MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. She serves on the board of Skydeck, the University of California, Berkeley, incubator and is a frequent lecturer at Stanford and Berkeley. Rebecca is a regular panelist at key fintech events such as Money2020, Lendit, Techcrunch and her privately hosted events (ask her).

Notable investments

Rebecca’s very first entry into venture was leading an early-stage investment in Lending Club, which turned into the largest US technology IPO of 2014 and the fourth largest US Internet IPO since 2001, behind Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Other notable early-stage investments include Check (acquired by Intuit), Doximity (NYSE: DOCS), RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce), Practice Fusion (acquired by Allscripts), and Luminar (NASDAQ: LAZR).

Focus areas

Rebecca applies her marketing expertise for her portfolio companies across three focus areas: financial services, digital health, and edgetech. Rebecca also has a passion for personalized medicine and is a self-proclaimed biohacker.

Personal interests

You can find Rebecca riding her Icelandic horses with her three kids, enjoying the ocean while kite boarding or paddle boarding, and reading up on personalized medicine.

Favorite book

Motivation

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What founders say

The team had dozens of ideas for us about marketing before they'd even invested. Rebecca is the exact personality you want on your board —intelligent, a listener, and a connector.
Jake Heller
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Co-Founder & CEO
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Casetext
Rebecca was one of the very early believers in healthtech. From the beginning, she has been an unwavering supporter of Doximity, doing everything she can to ensure our success. Rebecca just 'gets it' when it comes to marketing and growth. Her advice and network has helped us more times than I can count.
Jeff Tangney
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Co-Founder & CEO
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Doximity
One thing that attracted us to Canvas is how mission-driven they are as a team. We had competing offers for our Series A, but we were drawn to Rebecca Lynn for her deep credit expertise. Rebecca is one of the few fintech investors that really understands consumer credit.
Tony Huang
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Co-Founder & CEO
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Possible Finance
Rebecca Lynn pushed us very early to test TV as a marketing channel. At that point we were spending 30-50k a month on marketing channels. Doing a TV test for 200k was a big bet at that time, but we had a good discussion around this. Today TV is our biggest marketing channel, and it’s super scalable. This proven marketing channel has also helped us to raise our Series B.
Hanno Fichtner
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Founder & CEO
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Gabi
Everyone in venture talks about backing bold and transformative technology. They really don’t do it. They just make incremental bets with short time horizons. Rebecca is different. From Day 1 she was a believer and she understood the technology and what was needed.
Austin Russell
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Founder & CEO
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Luminar Technologies
We had a complicated situation with management changes, and a potential acquisition offer on the table. Rebecca just really rolled up her sleeves and got in there every day and worked her butt off to get us to a great outcome. Let’s just say you will always want to get Rebecca Lynn on the phone with the potential next VC or acquirer. No one could sell the company as well as she could—except for maybe me!
Lukas Biewald
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Founder
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Figure Eight (acquired by Appen)

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