Hayley Barna is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded Birchbox in 2009 while at Harvard Business School. In 2015, Barna "stepped away from her day-to-day role" at Birchbox, remaining a board member. In 2016 she became a partner First Round, a venture capital firm specializing in seed-stage funding.
Early life and education
Hayley Bay Barna was born in 1983. Her parents, Eileen B. Maisel and Richard A. Barna of New York, both worked at RAB Lighting in New Jersey. In high school, she was published in an international science research journal. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and has an MBA at Harvard Business School.
While working towards her MBA at Harvard Business School, Barna met Katia Beauchamp and a friendship was born. So, too, was the idea of Birchbox which Barna founded with Beauchamp. What began as a business plan during B-School turned into a website where they began to acquire customers interested in "an ecommerce experience focused on new product discovery." They founded the company Birchbox together in 2010. In 2013, she and Beauchamp won the Leadership Award At Forbes Women's Summit. Barna and Beauchamp opened the first Birchbox store in 2014. As of 2015, Birchbox had received over $70 million in venture funding and had one million subscribers. In August 2015, Barna ceased co-leading the company as co-CEO. She spent the subsequent six months as an angel investor. Although she stepped down from her role as co-CEO of Birchbox in 2015, she remained a member of the board.
First Round
After announcing it in February, she joined First Round Capital as a venture partner in 2016. On February 16, 2016, Barna shared a post on publishing platform medium.com about her first day at First Round stating, "I can’t think of a better place to do this than First Round, which led the seed round in my company Birchbox, and has always put founders first through good times and bad." She was their first female partner. One of her first initial First Round investments was the travel startup Collective Hotels & Retreats, with her also joining the board. By late 2017, she largely focused on e-commerce startups. She was on the boards of Madison Reed and RAB Lighting. By late 2017, she was organizing a working group of women in technology in New York with monthly meetings. Also in late 2017, she was promoted to general partner. At that point she had invested in companies such as Collective Retreats, Keeps, CrowdJustice, and Mirror.
Personal life
Barna is currently based in Manhattan, New York. During her time at Harvard Business School she met her husband, Fredrik Vik Maroe. They wed in 2014 at a private estate located in Staatsburg, New York.
