Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Adam Zeplain is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of mark vc, an early-stage venture firm based in Austin, Texas, focused on security & defense, healthcare, consumer, and enterprise software.

Known for his direct, founder-first approach, Adam works closely with entrepreneurs as both investor and coach—valuing honesty, resilience, and operational excellence. His reputation for adding strategic value has been highlighted in publications like Forbes, reflecting his belief that the best investors help founders scale themselves, not just their companies. He’s also known for a uniquely human diligence process— connecting with references from all stages of the founder’s life—to understand the whole person and who they are at their core.

Over the past decade, Adam has backed category leaders including Anduril, CrowdStrike, Reddit, Ring, ZenBusiness, Dragos, and Apptronik.

Co-Founder

Andy Bursten has had a long career building and operating technology companies. From inception, he served as Chairman of CyrusOne, an outsourced data center service provider. In 2007, he helped lead the sale of the company to a PE firm ABRY Partners.

Prior to CyrusOne, he was Co-Founder + President of Coastal Telephone Company, a long-distance telecommunications company. Through his leadership, Coastal Telephone Company expanded from a Texas based company to servicing over 100,000 customers in 19 states. In 1999, Coastal Telephone Company was sold to Eclipse Telecommunications, a subsidiary of IXC Communications (Nasdaq: IIXC).

Andy has been active in and served on many for profit and non-profit boards including Summer Energy Holding, The Emery Weiner School, Holocaust Museum Houston, The Alley Theater, Bellaire Little League, The Fay School, Congregation Emanu El, and The Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center.

Partner, Operations & Strategy

Cody runs all day-to-day fund operations and works closely with Adam on investment decisions and fund strategy. He also advises mark vc’s incubated companies.

Prior to joining mark vc, Cody was the Operating Partner (North America) at BBRC Private Equity and the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at BBRC Labs within Australian entrepreneur Brett Blundy’s family office, focusing on investments and incubations in the consumer products space.

Cody was also an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at PHD Ventures Investments, the private personal investment and advisory portfolio of Peter Diamandis (XPRIZE). Cody co-founded PHD Ventures’ “Strike Force” Incubator program. Bold Capital Partners, a $500m+ VC fund, was started out of this program.