I was nine the first time I went to the cinema. The film was Zhang Yimou’s Hero. For ninety-nine minutes, I didn’t look away. The theater felt like a church. I have been hopelessly in love with movies ever since.
Today, I’m a venture capital investor at Alumni Ventures. My interest in AI for media and entertainment begins with that love of movies. I want to back people inventing new ways to tell stories. I care about what a filmmaker can attempt when the cost of trying an idea falls. Underneath the investment thesis is a very ordinary moviegoer’s wish: show me something I haven’t seen before. Robert Bresson put it beautifully: “Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.”
My interest in full-stack AI comes from a less cinematic education. I started as a consultant and spent about nine years working in and with large companies. I learned how much human intelligence it takes to keep them running, and how much gets spent aligning boxes in PowerPoint or hunting through a spreadsheet for a few missing cents.
I’m drawn to full-stack AI companies that use agents to run the business themselves. Let the software handle the repetitive work, so people can spend more time exercising judgment and paying attention to one another.
Part of me is investing on behalf of my younger self. I want the companies I back to give people more room for the parts of their lives that never make it onto a spreadsheet.
I make things, too. Films
Outside work, I’m a husband and a cat dad, a marathoner and a heavy-metal fan. I want to be good at my work, and good at being there for the people I love. Both are part of the life I’m trying to build.