Angel Investing

At 19, Naval Ravikant invited me to become the youngest member of Spearhead, which gives founders a $2 million fund to invest in founders.

From Naval and Jeff Fagnan, I learned about the craft of investing and the psychology of investors. Apparently, it takes ten years to become a great investor. I’m grateful to have an early start.

Etched

In 2023, I became friends with Rob Wachen and Gavin Uberti - two of the most ambitious founders I had met who wanted to take on NVIDIA with an inference-specialized chip.

At the time, I was already deep in AI inference, running models locally and in the cloud and experiencing the limitations of general-purpose hardware firsthand. I read Etched’s chip specification. The bet was technically ambitious and far from certain, but the thesis made sense: inference would become one of the biggest markets in the world, and specialized silicon could win. I put half my Spearhead fund into their seed extension when everyone in Silicon Valley was passing.

At the time, investors struggled to believe that a team of dropouts could build a new semiconductor company. I introduced Rob and Gavin to one of TSMC’s earliest engineers, an HFT firm, and other investors who could understand the scale of what they were attempting.

As soon as Etched secured one customer LOI, the company quickly closed more than $100 million after months of passes. Investors are like sharks: once there is blood in the water, everyone arrives at once. The real opportunity is to form conviction before the signal becomes obvious.

In August 2026, Etched announced a $700 million Series D at a $21 billion valuation, led by Jane Street with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Tiger Global.

Capable

Isaak Freeman is a force of nature. I first met him when he first arrived to San Francisco, fresh from Austria. It was immediately clear to me that he was special. He is one of the most intense people I know. I have rarely met anyone with such high and ever-rising standards for himself across so many dimensions.

When I lived at Neogenesis with Andrej Karpathy, Isaak decided to turn the Hillsborough mansion into the venue for Future Forum. Against all odds, I watched him pull together one of the best conferences I have ever attended, centered on technological advancement. He is a born leader who leads with confidence and grace. He pairs high expectations and deep belief in others with compassion.

I watched Isaak finish his undergraduate degree at Berkeley in a year and go straight into a PhD at MIT with Ed Boyden. He was early to peptides and obsessive about optimizing sleep. If I had to describe him in two words: executes ferociously.

When Isaak started Capable, I had to support him. I joined his first friends-and-family round.

friend.com

In 2023, I wrote one of the first checks into Avi Schiffmann’s company. He went on to announce Tab, the first version of what became friend.com. Avi is a generational marketer who made launch videos a thing, and friend.com’s launches have reached hundreds of millions of views.

I also helped Avi recruit and hire his lead technical engineer.

Kerna Labs

I wrote the first check into Kerna Labs. I met Julia Peng and Amit Deshwar when we overlapped at one of the coolest hacker houses in San Francisco, back before hacker houses were cool. Amit joined Deep Genomics early and helped grow it through its Series C.

They had come up with a technology to de-risk drug candidates by using machine learning to design mRNA therapies for rare diseases. The cofounding team included one of Deep Genomics’ founding scientists and Moderna’s former Chief Scientific Officer. I helped Julia and Amit refine their pitch at my San Francisco apartment.

Kerna went on to raise an oversubscribed seed round backed by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI fund, Susa Ventures, and Patrick Hsu.

V12

I first met Luna in Tokyo at a crypto conference. I already knew her from her viral tweets and her work securing billions of dollars for leading crypto protocols. Talking with her in person, it immediately became clear that she was indeed insanely cracked.

V12 is Devin for security. Luna is a magnet for technical talent. The top CTF hackers seemed to have only two destinations: Cognition or V12.

Owsar

Brandon is perhaps the world’s leading expert at the intersection of computer graphics and neural network interpretability. A former game developer and web graphics designer, he became a machine learning researcher. His work has been shared by Jim Fan, NVIDIA’s Director of Robotics.

I wrote the second check into Owsar.

Portfolio

I’m an investor in 20+ companies. I’ll be adding them here while this site is under construction.

How I can be helpful

I like to be the first check and first believer in exceptional technical founders. As a founder, I know what it’s like to be in the arena: negotiating term sheets with tier-one venture capitalists, hiring, and launching viral products. It’s fucking hard, but incredibly rewarding. I’m empathetic, and I may believe in your potential more than you do at times :) I love technology and believe its advancement will enable greater prosperity for humanity. I write $25K–$250K checks.

• Technical talent and immigration. I founded Extraordinary.com and happen to be one of the best in the world at helping technical founders and talent come to and stay in America. I received the EB-1A Extraordinary Ability green card at 20.
• Launching and virality. I built Airchat’s viral invite loop, have launched products seen by millions, and can advise on distribution when it is useful.
• First-check conviction. I like backing technical entrepreneurs early, when belief and useful help matter most.
• Investor introductions and fundraising strategy. I have negotiated and closed term sheets with tier-one investors.

Don’t view me as an investor. I’m a peer, a fellow founder who can help. I’m always on your side and want to see you win, even if it isn’t with this company.

Looking ahead

I now continue to write checks from my small angel fund supported by Naval Ravikant, Jeff Fagnan, and others, backing technology founders who are moving the frontier forward.

Message me on X →

sigil.w3n@gmail.com