Sebastian Ruales

Sebastian Ruales is the Managing Partner and co-founder of Operator Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. Prior to transitioning to venture capital, he held product and engineering leadership roles at technology companies, including DigitalOcean and Okta. Through Operator Partners, Ruales manages over $100 million in assets under management across a portfolio of more than 20 companies, and he has personally angel invested in over 50 startups, frequently co-investing alongside Y Combinator and Elad Gil. The Universidad San Francisco de Quito computer science graduate recently expanded his firm's focus by leading seed rounds for two artificial intelligence infrastructure startups in 2025 and launching the Operator Academy podcast in early 2026. Ruales currently focuses on bridging his technical engineering expertise with investment acumen to back technical founders building enterprise infrastructure software and developer tools.