Maxim Sirenko

“In frontier technologies, speed is often the difference between massive success and running out of cash. I have seen teams go from failure to success based on subtle shifts of accountability, ownership, operational cadence, and clarity of what is most important and why. These approaches are both learnable and repeatable. They build upon their own momentum until sometimes, something seemingly impossible can become reality.

I thrive on jumping in where the fire is hottest to push new technologies forward. To do this, I love diving deep into underlying technologies, understanding them at their core, applying the “Elon algorithm,” and closing feedback loops. I did this as a product manager for over a decade at two incredibly innovative companies, SpaceX and Mapbox. Living through some of these experiences was definitely not fun at the time, but crazy fun with the benefit of hindsight for the learnings and immense sense of accomplishment.”

Max Sirenko returned to DFJ Growth as a venture partner in 2024, having started with the firm as an associate in 2013 before moving to product management and engineering roles for nearly a decade. During this period, he contributed to the growth and development of two of DFJ Growth’s most innovative portfolio companies, SpaceX, and Mapbox.

At SpaceX, Max owned the critical path for bringing up the Starlink Network from its first satellites, first tweet, first customers, and beta launch, serving in this key engineering role as Starlink grew to over four million customers in 73 nations across all seven continents and becoming a multi-billion revenue business. He was the responsible engineer for core performance metrics including reliability, throughput, latency, and packet loss globally. Max played vital engineering, project management, design, and business leadership roles across many other initiatives, and interacted with almost every team across the program.

At Mapbox, Max ran product strategy and business operations, successfully launching the company’s forays into multiple new verticals, as well as ending the company’s dependence on a competitor’s global address data. Max was also the product manager for traffic, helping establish the foundation that underpins the company’s automotive vertical strategy.

Max was an investment banker at Citigroup prior to joining DFJ Growth in 2013, advising on $29 billion in technology industry M&A and financing transactions. During his first stint at DFJ Growth, Max was involved in the company’s investments in Anaplan, Coinbase, Cylance, Mapbox, and SpaceX.

He graduated from Duke University with a BS in economics and computer science.