Before
A four-time founder, most recently the adtech company Triggit, which he co-founded with his sister and exited in 2015.
The move
He was already the person who introduced founders to investors, constantly and for nothing. His own framing is the useful part: if you can introduce a founder to an investor and the investor funds the deal, everybody owes you a favour. He formalized that existing behaviour into an AngelList syndicate, which turned an unpaid social role into a business model without needing to raise a fund first.
The turn
Cruise Automation, invested through the syndicate before GM acquired it. In his words, after the exit everyone suddenly thought he knew what he was doing. He now runs Coelius Capital as a solo general partner writing checks between 200 thousand and one million dollars.
Timeline
- Serial founder through the 2000s
- 2015 exits Triggit
- Becomes an AngelList syndicate lead
- The Cruise exit resets how the market reads him
- Solo general partner at Coelius Capital
What this route asks
That you are already the connective tissue between founders and capital. If people are asking you for introductions, you are running the unpaid version of a syndicate. Note that he is frequently described as a former Sequoia scout; no primary source supports that, and the syndicate route is the documented one.