Rachel Zabronsky, principal at PayPal Ventures, is one of our top Rising Stars in corporate venturing for 2025.
Rachel Zabronsky’s journey into corporate venturing took an unconventional route. She worked in marketing and communications at media analytics firm Nielsen and for biometric identification startup CLEAR before joining PayPal in a business-to-business marketing role.
This gave her a grounding in sales and consumer products, which has been “invaluable” to the team at PayPal Ventures, the corporate VC arm of the payments tech company, says James Loftus, managing partner of the CVC.
“Her experience in understanding market trends, consumer behaviour and brand strategy has significantly enhanced our approach to evaluating investment opportunities,” says Loftus.
Zabronsky was introduced to the ventures team when she joined PayPal’s Technology Leadership Program, which chooses 10 people from across the company to do a series of six-month rotations on different teams. She did so well that she returned to join the investment team three years ago.
She enjoys working with founders to help them grow their businesses. “That also stems from my experience as an operator, working out how to create connectivity and diving into the weeds with them,” says Zabronsky.
“Her experience in understanding market trends, consumer behaviour and brand strategy has enhanced our approach to evaluating investment opportunities.”
PayPal Ventures prioritises financial return and does not tie commercial deals to its investments. “It puts us ahead of trends. We are not at the whim of a product or business development team,” she says.
“We are investing in the best startups and then bringing that knowledge back into the business,” she says. PayPal has what it calls an ‘advisor network’ of senior business leaders in the company who have volunteered to share their expertise with startups.
Zabronsky predicts there will be a lot of innovation in fintech because of advances in AI. She also is looking at the impact of AI on how we shop, such as the use of AI ‘agents’. Consumer loyalty tech is another area where she sees investment potential.
See the full list of Rising Stars 2025 here.
