ELVERSON, PENNSYLVANIA | Marissa Mar is a good listener.
As a venture capitalist, she views each business opportunity with a discerning ear.
“It’s like Shark Tank but for high-growth tech companies,” she said.
But as a golfer, the 31-year-old from Palo Alto, California, also possesses a keen eye, particularly when it comes to course conditions, because she has served as the green chair and is currently on the architecture committee for The Olympic Club, host of five U.S. Opens and one U.S. Women’s Open, in San Francisco.
At the 36th U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship earlier this month, her eye was immediately drawn to the intricacies of the greens of the North Course at Stonewall. As a past club champion at Olympic, she is intimately familiar with challenging greens.
“The North Course is a great test of golf, but the greens are notably tricky,” said Mar, who played four years at Stanford and was a member of the Pac-12 champion Cardinal squad her senior year in 2014. “They did not play the course super long, but you had to be on the correct side of the greens. Most of my energy and concentration was on the greens.”
She liked the look of the greens at Stonewall because they are bent grass, just like back at Olympic.
“The severity of slopes at Stonewall is more than Olympic,” she said. “Adjusting to the pace was a learning curve for me.”
Although she lost in round one of match play this year, Mar made a splash in her U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur debut in 2017, earning medalist honors and advancing to the semifinals where she fell to eventual champion Kelsey Chugg. Along the way, she defeated past winner Julia Potter-Bobb in the round of 16.
She followed that with another round of 16 appearance in 2018 and lost in the first-round of match play in 2019 to finalist Talia Campbell. In 2015, she and partner Lila Thomas advanced to the round of 16 at the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball.
“Having more and more USGA experience just makes for more confidence,” Mar said.
Given her athletic background, Mar is well-stocked with confidence anyway, as a decorated basketball player in her high school days. Born and raised in Sacramento, she was the Sacramento Bee Metro Player of the Year in 2008 as her St. Francis High School team made four straight appearances in the state tournament. She made a game-winning shot in the section title game at the Arco Arena her sophomore year, and her team won that title again when she was a junior and a senior.
And don’t miss the bloodline as her mother, Gigi, was a three-time All-American at UCLA and a member of the Canadian Olympic Team in 1984.
Mar injured her wrist in the spring semester of her junior year at Stanford. Because she could not play golf, she found an internship with Kleiner-Perkins, a venture capital firm nearby.
“It was the most transformative summer of my life and really changed my trajectory,” Mar said. “I saw how cool it was to be a venture capitalist. You meet some really interesting people who want to change the world for the better and have this infectious optimism. Some ideas are incredible, and some are not as feasible. That’s the fun. I get paid to learn.”
“I just want to work and have a purpose.” — Marissa Mar
Now five years into her job at RPS Ventures, Mar has developed her own business tenacity that is balanced by doing good. Her focus is financial technology, e-commerce and supply chain logistics, but she is intrigued to find a sports technology idea.
While altruism is a driving factor in her decisions and she relishes in providing capital so that companies can get innovative ideas off the ground, she lives the bottom line, saying: “In financial investing, having a return is important.”
She admits she is not well versed in sports technology; she still has her eyes and ears directed at golf and sports technology.
A self-described outdoor type, Mar loves to hike and run with her 4-year-old Australian Shepherd, Gracie. She also plays tennis and basketball and cycles.
“I just want to work and have a purpose,” Mar said. “So, she and I go hand in hand. Having her on the golf course is even better.”