Early in my career, I was positive I didn’t want to be a venture investor. It’s always been clear to me that the most amazing contributors to this great tech ecosystem are the founders and operators and the incredible products that they build. So that’s where I wanted to end up.
Given that, my calculus when I joined In-Q-Tel in 2006 was that I’d spend a few years at the firm, make a contribution to the U.S. Intelligence Community, and learn what contributes to great, early-stage products.
Those 2-3 years turned into a full decade as I was fortunate enough to work with incredible founders and see the arc of success from early product resonance through incredible scale (up through IPO for FireEye, Cloudera, and Pure Storage). And it was those people and products that set the hook for me: what an awesome privilege it is to be a small part of so many great successes!
Today, at N47, I continue to get to work with incredible teams around the world; ones that are building the kinds of products that make a lasting difference to their customers. And there is nothing more fulfilling than to be part of all of the ups and downs as great products translate to long-term success. Most of what I focus on right now centers on infrastructure, dev tools, and cybersecurity, plus amazing opportunities in robotics. I am most immediately excited when I see founders apply emerging tech to a clean sheet approach to creating new products.
Outside of work, I serve on the boards of the Institute for Security and Technology and Camp Belknap, one of the longest-running summer camps in the U.S.
When did a product shift from interesting to inevitable?
I will never forget the experience of seeing a pre-release version of Skydio’s second-generation drone in action. It was the epitome of elegant abstraction of profound technical complexity, delivering the best autonomy in the world in a way so accessible to users that anyone could fly it like an expert (without crashing!).
Moreover, Skydio had a refined, full-stack solution, from software through airframe, an approach that is both more difficult but also more likely to deliver the kind of user-delighting experience that has been so lynchpin to Skydio’s success. The S2 demonstrated such a leap forward in capabilities that it was clearly going to be a direct hit for the customer pain points we had already mapped.
This all represented such a compelling, product-based inflection point that we immediately saw incredible potential ahead.
