Banister started her career in non-executive positions at NBCUniversal, working in systems administration and development support from 1999 to 2001. She has worked as a contributing writer at TechCrunch and accepted her first executive position at the security startup IronPort in 2003. A self-taught engineer, Banister held several management roles at IronPort, which was sold to Cisco for $850 million in 2007. According to The Wall Street Journal, she found herself with money from the acquisition that she didn't know what to do with. She considered putting it in the stock market or in land, but settled on startups. The first check she wrote as an angel investor was to SpaceX." Banister invested early in several companies worth more than a billion dollars, including Uber, Affirm, Opendoor, and Postmates. In late 2007, with her husband Scott Banister and Jeffrey Wescott, she co-founded Zivity, a photography platform company, and in 2010 added nude photos of herself to Zivity's premium section. She served as editor-in-chief until March 2016, when she became the first woman partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valleyventure capital fund. At Founders Fund Banister has invested in companies like Niantic and HQ Trivia. She is also a co-founder of Thankroll and Signal Media Project. Founders Fund partner Brian Singerman wrote, "Our team has known Cyan for years and we've been continually impressed by her ability to identify some of the most impactful technology companies in the world at the earliest stages." Polina Marinova of Fortune wrote, "It’s difficult to describe Banister as she does not fit perfectly in any box..." Marinova added that Shrug Capital founder Niv Dror said, "She likes to invest in weird things, sees things super early and just gets it." In March, 2020, Banister announced that she was leaving Founders Fund to join Long Journey Ventures to get back into angel investing.
Awards and honors
Cyan and Scott Banister won the Angel of the Year Crunchie award at the 2016 TechCrunch ceremonies. Jessi Hempel of Wired wrote that Banister is "an accomplished angel investor who, along with her husband, won TechCrunch’s Angel of the Year award last spring for prescient bets on SpaceX, Uber, and DeepMind Technologies." In 2015, Eugene Volokh announced that the UCLA First AmendmentAmicus Brief Clinic would be renamed the Scott & Cyan Banister First Amendment Clinic, "in recognition of the Banisters' very generous gift in support of the clinic."
