Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky (born 1980) is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded the creative-portfolio platform Behance, sold it to Adobe in 2012 and rose to chief strategy officer there, made early angel investments in Uber, Pinterest, and Warby Parker, and became a partner at the film studio A24 in 2025. He was named among the confirmed 2026 registrants of Dialog, the invitation-only society cofounded by Peter Thiel, in the membership roster leaked to WIRED in June 2026, which identified him as a partner at A24 and a former Adobe chief strategy and chief product officer.¹

Behance and 99U

Belsky took a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 2002 and an MBA from Harvard Business School, working at Goldman Sachs before founding Behance in 2006 with the designer Matías Corea. Behance built an online portfolio network for creative professionals, and Belsky paired it with the 99U conference, launched in 2009 and "devoted to the execution of ideas," and the Action Method, a productivity system and line of organizational products. The company raised a single outside round, a 6.5 million dollar Series A in May 2012, with investors including Union Square Ventures and Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions.²³

The 99U brand and the Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle books extended Belsky's name beyond the product into the productivity-and-creativity commentary that accompanied his investing.⁴⁵

The Adobe Acquisition and the Chief Strategy Role

Adobe announced its acquisition of Behance on December 20, 2012, in a deal that TechCrunch reported at slightly more than 150 million dollars in cash and stock plus multi-year earnouts; Adobe never officially disclosed the figure, and the 150 million dollar number is a press estimate. Belsky joined Adobe as vice president of community, overseeing Behance. He left in February 2016 to join the venture firm Benchmark, announced as its sixth general partner by Bill Gurley, then stepped back to a venture-partner role that September, telling Fortune he could not see himself "as a VC for the next ten years in the traditional sense."³⁶⁷

Belsky returned to Adobe in December 2017 as chief product officer and executive vice president of Creative Cloud, leading product and engineering across the Creative Cloud applications. He was promoted around March 2023 to chief strategy officer and executive vice president of design and emerging products. During this period Adobe launched the generative-artificial-intelligence model Firefly in beta in March 2023, and Belsky publicly championed the company's generative-AI push. He announced his departure from Adobe in January 2025, with a last day in March 2025, remaining an adviser to the company.⁸⁹

Venture Investing

Belsky's angel and venture investments confirmed in contemporaneous press include early positions in Uber, Pinterest, Warby Parker, and the live-streaming app Periscope. He operates an angel vehicle and writes the Implications newsletter on technology and creativity rather than running a named fund. His Benchmark stint in 2016 placed him among a partner group that included Gurley, Peter Fenton, and Matt Cohler, and his investing has continued alongside his operating roles; a February 2026 round in the accounting-software company Basis named him as a co-investor alongside Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and the Box cofounder Aaron Levie.⁶¹⁰

Belsky was an early advocate within Adobe for non-fungible-token and web3 features, championing the "Prepare as NFT" and Content Credentials tools announced at Adobe MAX in October 2021. He later argued, in a March 2023 interview, that generative artificial intelligence would succeed in the creative market where web3 had failed because web3 "added more friction."¹¹

A24

Belsky joined the film and entertainment studio A24 as a partner leading technology and innovation, founding A24 Labs, in an arrangement announced January 30, 2025, with a start around March 2025. A24 is the studio behind Moonlight, Hereditary, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Reporting uniformly describes Belsky as a partner and operating executive rather than a funding-round investor or board member; he is not named in A24's financing rounds. A24 raised 225 million dollars at a 2.5 billion dollar valuation in 2022 in a round led by Stripes, and raised a further round in 2024 led by Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital at a 3.5 billion dollar valuation, neither of which included Belsky.¹²¹³

Belsky also holds a confirmed corporate board seat at the software company Atlassian, effective August 1, 2024.¹²¹⁴