Peter Cowen
Sutton Capital
Peter Cowen is a technology investment banker and a mentor and angel investor in tech-enabled outsourced companies. Peter is the Founder and Managing Director of Sutton Capital, a Los-Angeles based technology investment bank that advises on mergers, acquisitions and large capital raises. He has led dozens of deals totaling over $500 million in value. Peter has been an angel in over 50 early stage deals and an LP in a half dozen seed VC funds. His investments include MindBody (NSDQ: MB), Style Haul (sold to Bertelsmann), Cognition (sold to Nuance NSDQ: NUAN), Pulse Biosciences (NSDQ: PLSE), Winc, ESalon, and Joany. He also currently serves on the board of 3 venture-backed firms: Leaseville, 17Hats and ShipHawk. Peter founded the largest annual SoCal tech conference focused on educating entrepreneurs in understanding deep customer engagement called the Recurring Revenue Conference, with over 600 attendees in 2018. He has also been on the UCLA Anderson faculty for the past 10 years teaching the fully-employed and executive MBAs. Previously, Peter co-founded three companies that were sold to public companies or a strategic partner: one in computer networks, one in biometrics and one in logistics optimization. Peter has an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.
Content & Articles by Peter Cowen
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for Early Stage Companies
In our latest session from the Mucker Growth Series featuring Ethan Smith from Graphite, we explored AEO, a significant new approach for optimizing visibility in AI-driven search, particularly relevant as...
Startup Guide to AI Visibility: Be the Brand ChatGPT Recommends
Introduction Today, users aren’t just searching on Google. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI systems for advice. AI visibility is the new frontier of brand awareness....
Practical Uses of AI & Automation for Startup Operations
In a recent Mucker Growth Series session, we invited Rock Vitale, Founder & CEO of Easie, to share how he’s helped early-stage teams move from manual, fragmented workflows to streamlined,...
2025 New York Tech Week Recap Of Mucker Sessions
Last week during New York Tech Week 2025, we joined more than 1,000 events hosted by founders, investors, and VCs. This post is a full Mucker recap of the three...
How to Build a Customer Support Function for Startups Using AI Tools with Alex Velinov
Delivering high-quality customer support can be one of the most resource-draining parts of a startup. The good news: we’re at a turning point where founders can use AI tools to...
Zero → 100: The Exact Steps We Took to Close Our First 100 Paying Customers
Going from zero customers to 100 in just four months sounds impossible—unless you’re a founder willing to roll up your sleeves and hustle relentlessly. I’m Gaurav Bhattacharya, co-founder of Jeeva.ai,...