Ben Stokes

Founding Partner of Chasing Rainbows

Ben Stokes is the Founding Partner of Chasing Rainbows, an early-stage investment fund specifically aimed at creating more equality in startup funding by investing in founders who come from underrepresented backgrounds - particularly those from the LGBTQ+ community.

Ben previously founded and ran the virtual networking platform SocialTable, with customers on all 7 continents. Using his own experience as an LGBTQ+ founder of color, he has been an active angel investor in companies led by underrepresented founders and has fostered a number through to their exit or next investment phase.

He was a mentor at the Australian Landing Pad in San Francisco, assisting Australian founders who take their start-ups and scale-ups global. Ben has an Executive MBA, attended UC Berkeley’s Venture Capital Program and was selected to be part of both the StartOut Growth Lab, a start-up incubator located in San Francisco, and RBL1, based in Austin. In 2020 he was asked to address the UN General Assembly for their Leaders on Purpose Summit. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur he worked at Oracle and Salesforce.

Ben Stokes grew up on a farm on the North-West Coast of Tasmania after being adopted from an orphanage in Sri Lanka, by a loving Tasmanian family. Ben's mission is to help create a world that's built on radical inclusivity where diversity of knowledge and experience is celebrated. It is the cornerstone for the vision of his fund, Chasing Rainbows.