MH

Michael Harries

Partner at The Robotics Hub VC | 25+ Years in Pioneering Technologies and Market Innovation | Living in the Future | Maker

San Francisco Bay Area

Invests in

Stages:

  • Min Investment:

    $0.00
  • Max Investment:

    $0.00
  • Target Investment:

    $0.00

Work Experience

  • Partner

    2017

    The increased collaboration between human and machine (“Augmented Intelligence”) will be the centerpiece of our economy and daily lives, and is arguably required for our economy to keep functioning. Robotics Hub is the first VC aimed at actively creating companies of consequence out of emerging augmented intelligence and robotics breakthroughs, with more than seven years of demonstrated success getting extremely ambitious products funded, launched, and scaled. This Pittsburgh-headquartered, globally reaching organization is positioned to use our global network’s unique and differentiated resources to develop and foster the kind of organizations that will one day redefine way we live, work and define our economy. Our approach is designed to rapidly identify the most viable ideas and strategies, concentrate resources around them, and shows a repeated track record taking the strongest ideas from pre-product to revenue in less than a year and from revenue to growth stage in less than five. Core to this success is structuring our relationships with our companies much closer to that of co-founder than a typical venture investor. Began as an in-house, cross-campus Robotics Ventures Initiative at Carnegie Mellon. Spun out as an independent for-profit entity serving the broader regional and national robotics community in late 2015.

  • Mentor/Associate

    2017

    World leading deep tech accelerator. Mentor for companies in Quantum, AI and Prime streams.

2016 - 2017

  • CTO

    2016 - 2017

    Joined company as CTO after investing in them at Citrix Startup Accelerator. Stayed until A round raised. Customer development; development cadence/product management; messaging for highly technical product; positioning for investors. Still an advisor. Kyndi's AI helps business with unstructured data, especially enterprise search with large quantities of text documents.

2002 - 2016

  • Chief Technologist, Citrix Startup Accelerator

    2010 - 2016

    Established the Citrix Startup Accelerator as a new approach to corporate applied research and open innovation. Identified & funded all 31 startups in the program. Sourced and recruited new companies, closed investments, worked directly with every company, built connections with Citrix executive and technology teams, sat as board observer for every company, acted as executive coach, provided market and product strategy advice, and provided introductions to relevant customers, advisors, investors. Apart from strategic insights and driving innovation culture, Citrix Startup Accelerator has had more than 6 exits to date and many still active companies including highlights: TidalScale, UpGuard, Kyndi and Graymatics. Michael remained a senior member of Citrix Labs and Citrix CTO Office.

  • Senior Director Strategy and Communications, Citrix Labs and CTO Office

    2002 - 2011

    Technology strategy, technology trends and market, product ideas process, new product champion, futures, innovation coach, speaker, product management, scenario analysis, CTO Office strategy. Global technology strategy team. Citrix Labs had an outsized impact on Citrix. This was a global organization headquartered in Sydney, Australia, taking a whole-of-company view of innovation in and around Citrix, and pioneered many Citrix innovations and new products. Also drove the Citrix CTO Office.

  • Product Manager/Scientist/etc

    1999 - 2002

    Customer implementation and training; established product management; established support team; core research on technology extensions; development specs; first company patent. Pacific Knowledge Systems was an early stage startup, commercializing specialized Machine Learning technology to provide smart assistants for pathologists.

1995 - 1999

  • Researcher/Lecturer

    1995 - 1999

    Researcher with machine learning pioneers Ross Quinlan and Claude Sammut. Taught both Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence courses.

1994 - 1999

  • Founder/CEO

    1994 - 1999

    Founded company, built team, created and sold software for scientific evaluation of machine trading systems. Based on PhD thesis into machine learning for domains with context drift applied to live market trading. Sold software to traders globally via internet distribution.