I’m a four-time founder. I built an e-commerce business, a SaaS company that reached millions in revenue, and a few things that didn’t work. The one that changed me was Diptera.ai, where we spent four years fighting mosquitoes with mosquitoes - engineering them to fight malaria, raising millions for an idea that sounded impossible, running a historic field pilot, and ending up working alongside the Gates Foundation. The technology is now deployed in Africa.
Here’s something I’ve learned about myself: I don’t measure those four years in the money I did or didn’t make. I measure them in what I got to be close to. The science, the impossible problem, the people, the stories. That proximity to extraordinary work is real value to me - not a consolation for chasing a safer business, but the thing itself.
So that’s my honest thesis as I move into backing deep-tech founders: the stories and the exposure to the frontier are part of my return, not separate from it. I’d rather be patient with a hard, important company that lets me stand close to something remarkable than chase a faster, emptier win. I’ve done the faster, emptier wins. They left me cold.
I’m good at one specific thing - taking complex, messy ideas and turning them into businesses that actually work. Translating science into a story people will fund and follow. That’s what I want to do for founders now: back them, help them, and stay close to the 0-to-1 frontier where I’ve always come most alive.
I’m figuring out how to be a good deep-tech investor as I go, and I’m writing about it honestly here - the deals, the passes, what I learn, and what I get wrong.
If you’re building something ambitious at the frontier, say hi.
