Original Capital
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
— Eric Hoffer, 1973
The world
Over the next decade we will move up the Kardashev scale. In some fields we are compounding at 5x a year: one year of 2027 will hold 3,125 years of 2022 in speed and intelligence. Recursive self-improvement is very near. Millennium problems have been solved in 88 hours. The world is asymmetric.
We may have to “choose to die”. Humans will be a small fraction of the world's intelligence. The jagged frontier of science will be smoothed and pushed outward. All of it needs doing, and eight billion people need to come with us.
As code, intelligence and skills become abundant, other forms of value rise in their place. R&D needs a physical harness: ideas now arrive faster than they can be built and tested, and fabrication is the bottleneck.
What an amazing time to be alive, and an insane one to be in technology. We are in our prime, building for the new world.
Founders
We invest in Original founders: people with the knowledge and depth to hold an original view of the world. Some are commercial scientists carrying a result from the lab into a market. Some are dreamers with a precise, unreasonable picture of the future. Some have lived something that gives them a view nobody else has.
Courage, a chip on the shoulder, a deep desire to see the world change, and the ability to compound are required.
Companies
Some truths hold. Cheaper, faster and better is still the core of adoption, and of product.
Ambitious companies are moving from bits to atoms and beginning to look like heavy industry.
How we invest
We invest early, usually as the first check, and write $500k to $5M.
From there our job is to make founders more ambitious. Historically that has meant helping them raise from S-tier investors. As companies move from bits to atoms, it increasingly means capital formation for heavy industry.
Team
, Partner. Previously Insight Partners, then Chief Strategy Officer at Carta as it grew from under $5M to over $100M ARR. Early investor in Ramp, Aven, Front, Qualia and Instabase.
I grew up in the Scottish countryside, raised by working-class parents from India and Kenya.
I first came to the U.S. to attend NYU, and started my career at Insight Partners, where I helped source Series A investments in Thycotic (18x return) and EquipmentShare (now valued at $3.75B).
Later, I joined Carta as Chief Strategy Officer and helped scale the company from under $5M to over $100M in ARR in under four years. Along the way, I made early investments in Ramp, Aven, Front, Qualia, and Instabase.
At any hour of the day, you'll probably find me helping founders think through their hardest problems.
I live in Miami with my wife and our four kids.
, Partner. Previously Meta (Core Ads, Libra), then Head of Product at FTX, where he also led FTX Ventures and backed Anthropic, Cursor and Solana.
I grew up in Amritsar, India, and came to the U.S. after graduating from IIT Kanpur to pursue a PhD at NYU.
I dropped out and began my career at a high-frequency trading firm before moving to Palo Alto to join Meta, where I led teams across Core Ads and was one of the earliest recruits to Libra, Meta's first crypto initiative.
In 2020, I joined FTX as Head of Product. We were a small team working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I helped scale the exchange from $15M to over $1B in revenue and led FTX Ventures, where I backed Anthropic's $500M Series B, Cursor's seed round, and a $50M investment into Solana tokens (would be worth $8B+ today) — a portfolio that ultimately played a major role in helping the bankruptcy estate make customers whole.
I'm a tinkerer by nature and spend most of my time building and testing software. I love helping founders think through product and assemble world-class technical teams.
I live in Berkeley with my wife and daughter.
, Venture Partner. CEO and co-founder of BRM Software. Previously Summit Partners, RelateIQ, Sourcegraph and Carta.
I'm from Worcester, MA, and first came to the Bay Area to attend Stanford, where I was a starting offensive lineman on the football team alongside Andrew Luck.
I began my career at Summit Partners before moving into senior operating roles at RelateIQ, Sourcegraph, and Carta. Today, I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of BRM Software, an Original Capital portfolio company.
I love working with founders on go-to-market and distribution strategy. I've also made personal investments in companies like Flock Safety, Ramp, and OpenGov.
I live in Menlo Park with my wife and son.
, Venture Partner. Founder of Blockit. Previously Sequoia Capital and Insight Partners.
I grew up in Vancouver, B.C., raised by parents from East Africa.
I came to the U.S. to attend Harvard and started my career at Insight Partners, where I sourced early investments in Armis and Project44.
In 2019, I joined Sequoia Capital and worked on investments in Grafana Labs, Cresta, and Benchling. I later left to found Blockit — Original Capital was our first investor.
I love working with founders on product and strategy. My personal investments include Rogo and Assort Health.
I live in San Francisco with my fiancée.
, Venture Partner. Runs finance at the firm. Previously Index Ventures, Carta and HarbourVest.
I grew up in rural New Hampshire.
Before joining Original, I spent time at Index Ventures, Carta, and HarbourVest. Today, I oversee finance at the firm — making sure K-1s arrive on time and wires land where they're supposed to.
I live in Chicago with my wife and two children.
Portfolio
19 companies
- —
- Select a company
* Companies from our professional and personal portfolios