Charlie O'Donnell is best known as the sole Partner and Founder of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. The firm made pre-seed and seed investments from 2012-2023 and was the first venture firm located in Brooklyn—where he was born and raised. He is currently coaching and advising while working on some new personal projects. 

Charlie developed a reputation for being early in identifying important companies. Nick Bilton identifies him as an influence on early Twitter investors in his book, Hatching Twitter. Dennis Crowley credits him as having helped kick off the first funding of Foursquare before other VCs had said yes. At First Round Capital, he sourced the firm's investments in Singleplatform (sold to Constant Contact) and GroupMe (sold to Skype). Charlie discovered GroupMe at the hackathon where the service had been built. He also sourced investments in Backupify (which was an idea he had tweeted to the founder), and Refinery29.  

Working in venture capital since 2001, he apprenticed his way through the asset class with analyst roles on the original Union Square Ventures team as well as at the General Motors pension fund—a long-time limited partner in many top-tier funds.  

Charlie is one of only a dozen individuals to be named to Business Insider's 100 Most Influential People in NY Tech five or more times. He served on the founding board of the New York Tech Meetup and was one of the group's first 100 members. Nearly 18,000 people read his weekly NYC tech newsletter. He has spoken at SXSW and Techcrunch Disrupt.

Charlie bikes to work, has done six Ironman 70.3 triathlons, four marathons, and runs the kayaking program in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which he co-founded. 

Fun fact: The longest consecutive time he has been outside of the five boroughs of New York City is three weeks.