Andrew Bartusiak: Senior Associate at PeakSpan

Andrew Bartusiak

Senior Associate

In their words:

The best compliment I've gotten from a CEO was when they said I felt more like a team member than an investor, and that is what I am aiming for in every partnership.

Sector Expertise

Investments

About:

Andrew is a proud Yinzer (AKA a Pittsburgh native) who joined PeakSpan in 2019 after interning in 2017 and 2018. He studied finance with a minor in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he played football for four years, was fortunate to be selected as captain, and ran the venture capital club, Scottie Ventures. He is proud to be the older brother to two younger sisters, Taylor and Midson, and his younger brother, Brady. Outside of work, Andrew enjoys playing D&D, reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, and spending time with his beagle, Theo.

What makes you excited to come to work each day at this stage of your career?

I’m energized by the chance to get to know founders and CEOs as people, then go deep on their business until the “why” and the “how” are both crystal clear. The work that pulls me in most is rolling up my sleeves alongside management teams, being a steady partner who does the homework, and earning the right to have an opinion by doing the research behind it.

What’s a project or moment at PeakSpan where your involvement changed a company’s trajectory?

I spent about six months working shoulder-to-shoulder with a management team on a tuck-in acquisition, from diligence and modeling through deal terms and the integration plan. Being in the weeds together meant we could make decisions faster and with more confidence, and the end result meaningfully shifted the company's financial standing and competitive positioning. It was a project that reminded me how much outcomes are driven by smart people staying aligned and focused through a lot of small but very important phone calls.

What do companies in the $10–50M ARR stage tend to get wrong?

They scale their GTM motion before nailing repeatability. Some teams hire cohorts of reps and ramp spend when they don't have a sharp definition of ICP or a clear understanding of why their product wins with certain customers. You can of course grow for a while just by doing more, but the inefficiency eventually catches up. The teams that navigate it best do the foundational work to i) get sharper on who they serve, ii) make the value of their offering obvious in packaging, and iii) build cadences that surface issues early and often.

What kind of founder problem do you get pulled into most often, and why?

Hiring! It’s high-stakes and time-consuming, and it’s hard to run a tight process when you’re also running the company. I've spent a lot of cycles helping companies find the right people (from IC through C-suite), and I like helping make it easier to get to the right answer, whether that’s clarifying the role, sourcing and screening, or doing interviews so the CEO can make the call with confidence.

At the end of a multi-year partnership, what do you hope founders say you were known for?

I hope they’d say I genuinely understood their business and that I cared about their success as people, not just as an investment. That when they needed help (a key hire, a strategic decision, a tough quarter, etc.), I was willing to roll up my sleeves and do the work alongside them. The best compliment I've gotten from a CEO was when they said I felt more like a team member than an investor, and that is what I am aiming for in every partnership.

Personal side: