Roy Bahat

Roy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, an early-stage venture capital firm backed by Bloomberg that invests in startups making work better. It was the first venture fund to focus on investing in the future of work and artificial intelligence. Bloomberg Beta has invested in MasterClass, Lambda Labs, Slack, Flexport, Codecademy, and Textio, among other companies.  

Bahat chairs the Aspen Business Roundtable on Organized Labor, convening “labor open” business leaders to explore new ways of relating to organized labor and worker power. Following work he did with New America to understand the long-term effect of technology on work in America, Bahat was a commissioner on the California governor’s Future of Work Commission. He also created #thisisnotadvice, a community-edited guide on how to work, and hosts the [Going to Work] conference about work in America. He was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business. 

Before starting Bloomberg Beta, Bahat co-founded a venture-backed company and worked at News Corporation. In addition to founding startups and working as a corporate executive in media, he has served in government (in the office of the New York City mayor), academia, professional services (early in his career at McKinsey & Co.), and nonprofits (leading a student volunteer nonprofit, Phillips Brooks House Association, and advising the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Economic Security Project). 

Bahat serves on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley where he teaches two courses: one on media, and one on organized labor—the first of its kind in the country—at the Haas School of Business. He was named one of students’ favorite MBA professors. 

Bahat graduated from Harvard College and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.