Seed capital for founders building in hard-tech

“Society’s biggest problems are engineering problems. Give innovators modern technology, capital, and permission to build, and we can solve them.”

I was born and raised in Del Mar, California, the son of school teachers. I graduated with honors from Brown University and have spent more than twenty years as an entrepreneur first, and an investor second. In that time, I’ve learned there is no single path to solving hard problems. The greatest breakthroughs often come from unique approaches, unconventional thinking, and good old fashioned grit.

I served as Chief Product Officer at Tinder, where I built one of the most successful consumer products of a generation. For the past five years, my focus has been hard tech: backing the people building the physical future. I believe in the power of technological progress to improve society. Throughout history, innovation has expanded what is possible, improved living standards, and given us new tools to confront problems once thought unsolvable.

We are now entering a new future, one that increasingly resembles the science fiction many of us grew up imagining. Autonomous machines. New forms of energy. Advanced manufacturing. A renewed industrial base. To name a few. My focus is on the missionaries building that future.

I invest in industrials, manufacturing, defense, energy, space, and aerospace, particularly companies expanding the productive capacity and resilience of the West. I’m drawn to hard problems in the physical world and to founders with the conviction to spend years, if not decades, solving them. I invest personally and directly.