San Francisco, California
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2004
2004
We invest with the conviction of your *first believer*. I believe there are two types of investors - engineers and financiers - the difference being the investors' focus on building value or extracting value. I’ve been an engineer my entire life. Our core philosophy revolves around matching talented partners with great ideas to build businesses. By providing resources and expertise, we work with people to make ideas into reality. Our investment thesis is to seek products and platforms that intersect where web meets world. I believe that innovation happens everywhere, and being early in large emerging markets (geographic & sector) is a winning formula. Founders must have global perspective beyond their local ecosystem and recognize that investors, customers, partners and talent will require them to get on a plane. I invest early and go deep working to add value to companies. My operational expertise combined with board of directors role with high growth companies helps me deliver value to founders. I invest in founders who are experienced in the industry they are disrupting and driven to solve the problems they have experienced themselves. I invest in companies that are going after huge markets that are poised for catalytic change. I invest m̶y̶ our own money with Anne Driscoll as angels, and I don't shy away from investing based on an emotional connection and gut feel as a *first check* investor and *first believer*. I'm fortunate to have a pretty good track record: 4 exits, 1 🦄, and more on their way. I'm happy investing as an angel, and don't want to be a money manager so we aren't raising a VC fund, but if you're interested in participating in our dealflow, you can join my syndicate on AngelList.
2020
2020
Analog is a book about my pursuit of a life of agency, meaning, and joy. It’s about the parallel journey of living up to my father's legacy. These pillars are something I hope you might find helpful in navigating your life’s journey. An alternative title could be How to Be Happy. In writing this memoir, I’ve dug into my life story to create a framework for what drives me. Like many, I started with a simple wish: to be happy.
2001 - 2024
2001 - 2024
Flatstack builds engineering teams for companies to help them scale their software product development. Flatstack hires, trains and develops the best software engineers who understand global collaboration and deliver high quality code. I co-founded Flatstack with my partners in 2005, after working with them as developers since 2001. We are a global software development company with 50+ engineers and designers. Due to our global nature, we are able to offer competitive software development in Ruby on Rails and for iOS/Android application development. We can build one-off projects or augment internal engineering teams for clients worldwide.
2022 - 2023
2022 - 2023
Flow State is a platform that helps you hire and manage vetted software development teams from our network and integrate them directly into your engineering flow.
2010 - 2023
2010 - 2023
I lead the first investment round in Federated Sample through Voodoo Ventures in 2010. FED is a market research technology firm based in New Orleans. The firm creates technologies that maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of gathering data and intelligence from consumer markets.
2009 - 2023
2009 - 2023
Launch Pad is a community for entrepreneurs that provides workspace, a network of mentors, and educational programming and events. We opened Launch Pad in downtown New Orleans and quickly grew to 11,000 square feet and 75 members. Launch Pad is workspace, community, and event programming. We host over 250 events annually from the majority of the New Orleans meetups to our annual entrepreneurship conference, Launch Fest. We're proud that Launch Pad has become the hub of the New Orleans startup community.
2005 - 2006
2005 - 2006
VegasHotSpots was the leading entertainment and nightlife company in Las Vegas. We operated a network of seven websites focusing on the sale of entertainment oriented destination services. I managed the product platform and the integration after VegasHotSpots acquired my company, Destination VIP.
2001 - 2005
2001 - 2005
I founded Destination VIP, a destination management company that sold group travel packages for weekend excursions to Las Vegas, New Orleans, Miami, Los Angeles & Reykjavik, Iceland. I started the company in 2001 while at business school at USC, and the company was acquired in 2005 by VegasHotSpots.