I invest in 2-4 early stage companies a year. I look for ambitious founders that I’d want to work with every single day, audacious and technically interesting ideas, and amazing products that are a delight to use. I tend to prefer companies that blend deep technical insights with a relentless focus on the customer, especially along the dimensions of design, user experience, and simplicity of use. Thematically, I focus primarily on software & computing infrastructure, applications of data & AI, and tools for builders (e.g. developers, designers, engineers). I invest from Pre-Seed to Series A and am happy to write the first check into a company.
My investing philosophy tends to start from the perspective of computing primitives. I spend a lot of time following research & engineering trends in areas like virtualization, databases, cloud infrastructure, machine intelligence, algorithms, and similar. I then look for opportunities that draft off of these technology advances or market shifts, whether horizontal and vertical. For example - Earthly reinvents CICD thanks to advances in containerization and cloud infrastructure, and Panther reinvents security log analytics thanks to the rise of the data warehouse. You can get a sense of how I approach this research-driven investing process via some of my writings on S3 as an Infrastructure Backend, experimentation, data applications, large language model UX, and foundation models.
The two things that draw me the most to venture capital are intellectual curiosity and a deep admiration for the startup journey. I love to learn, and am excited to learn as much as I can about your industry, your product, and your technology. Most founders I have worked with end up telling me I came to understand what they are building more deeply than anyone else they have spoken with. I also love the startup journey - I am deeply compelled by the idea of a small group of people with a huge idea creating something amazing in the face of all the odds being against them. I draw immense joy from working with early stage teams going through this process, helping them in whatever way I can. Figuring out how to make a startup work is sort of like the most interesting puzzle in the world to me, and I can’t imagine a more exciting job than getting to spend my days exploring amazing new technology with brilliant entrepreneurs.
I am a product person at heart and as a result, I like product-oriented founders playing in markets where great products can win. My favorite “pitch” meeting structure with entrepreneurs is seeing a demo or prototype and talking about key product choices and decisions, and the technology innovations that enabled them. Also, if you ever want someone to review your onboarding flow and incessantly highlight every single minuscule issue, I’m your guy.
My first priority is building a strong baseline layer of knowledge and context about your business and market. This is the foundation that allows me to be a good partner. If I don’t truly understand your product and technology, I can’t possibly help you in any meaningful way. This level of rigor in learning and understanding hopefully comes across in my diligence process, but I also see it as an ongoing duty of mine throughout the lifecycle of your startup.
I like to set a baseline frequency of engagement, and then layer in ad-hoc discussions and deeper dives as necessary. For most companies, I set-up a standing 45-60 minute meeting once every 2 weeks by default. This gives us a regular cadence to engage, catch up, and talk about relevant issues. From there, as topics come up, we can spend as much additional time as is needed. This might look like a series of many meetings in a given week, a 3-4 hour deep dive session on a key strategic topic, or a quick but essential late night call at 11 PM for something urgent.
I like a mix of synchronous and asynchronous communication. Regular in person (or Zoom) time helps us have deeper discussions about bigger topics. Slack and email are great for small questions, tactical help, or similar. For urgent things, text me or call me and I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can.
I try to be involved by default, but I am also happy to step back when not needed. If things are going great and you just want to focus on executing, I won’t bother you. Conversely, when you pull me into critical inflection points where a big decision needs to be made, I am happy to spend as much time as possible. Most startups need different levels of engagement at different stages, and I look to you to identify what is right at any given moment.
You’re in the driver’s seat. I am not the CEO, and it is not my job to tell you what to do. I see a lot of my job as asking the right questions, pointing out things you may not be thinking about, providing a different set of perspectives, and pushing your thinking where I can. I will ask the hard questions and I will tell you when something you’re doing doesn’t make sense to me, but I ultimately defer to you.
While there are obvious limits to the degree to which an investor can impact the execution of a business, I find I can often be helpful in the following ways: