I’m a computer scientist, working on AI infra. I have experience scaling, failing and exiting startups. I was a “professor” (JRF) at Oxford in CS and did my PhD at Cambridge on dynamic graph algorithms.
- 2024-now: AI infra (TPUs + RL) at Google
- 2020: head of ML at Lacework - a cloud security startup, raised $2B @ 8.3B, acquired by Fortinet. I trained foundational GNNs for detection across lots of log data.
- 2018: EIR @ rocketship.vc - using RL to train agents to trade limit orders based on L3 microstructure: see deeptrade/. Used as a project for Stanford “mining massive datasets” class.
- 2013: Chief Scientist+CTO, C9/Insidesales - one of the first companies to apply ML to sales data. Acquired by insidesales.com (grew to ~800 people, ~$1.5b valuation)
- 2012: founder, featurestream - I built a streaming ML system but building an MLaaS company is tough.
- 2009: founder/CTO, Acunu - a streaming data analytics company, acquired by Apple. We built a streaming analytics engine on Cassandra and worked on cache-oblivious indexing algorithms for SSDs.
I was previously an academic:
- 2008-13: Fellow in Computer Science, Oxford (St Johns College). Took a sabattical to found Acunu.
- 2003-6: PhD Computer Science, Cambridge. Thesis: Compact forbidden-set routing
I enjoy working with technical VC firms:
- glasswing ventures - technical advisor
- neotribe.vc - technical advisor since inception (2018)
- tiny.vc - founding LP, #1 micro seed fund in EMEA (eg Wayve, Sorare, ..)
- rocketship.vc - EIR, built company embedding models
- pioneer ai fund - LP, post-YC AI fund
and others
I grew up in the UK and live in the Bay Area. I play drums and I rowed for Cambridge men’s lightweights.