A few years ago, I co-founded a small fund called CSGV (CS Grad Ventures) that took money from — and invested it in — Computer Science PhDs and Professors. Our vision was to democratize Venture Capital back to the researchers themselves. To succeed we would need to find the next Databricks.

That fund is how I met Aravind Srinivas, whom I invested in and co-founded Perplexity with. It has been inspiring to see how the network of research founders has helped Perplexity and how Perplexity has benefitted in return.

Aravind and I were introduced by one of the CSGV PhD LP investors (an AI researcher at Meta). Aravind and I had a bunch of mutual connections that we used to reference each other (e.g., I was co-teaching a class at Berkeley about startups with his PhD advisor). And another of the CSGV LPs (a Berkeley PhD himself) became Perplexity’s founding engineer.

Since my co-founder Andrew Krioukov and I started CSGV, we’ve continued to meet, teach, and advise dozens of PhDs and Professors out of top CS programs that are obsessed with impact. I see my Databricks and Perplexity founders in many of them.

Today, I’m excited to announce Laude Ventures Fund I, the next chapter for CSGV. The name Laude rhymes with “awed”, and is inspired by Cum Laude (to graduate “with honors”). Not only have our researcher LPs joined us from CSGV, but we’ve doubled their ranks: we now have over 50 leading computer scientists — one in three of which is a unicorn founder, one in five a decacorn founder. This includes heroes of mine like Turing Award winner Dave Patterson and Jeff Dean, two of my co-authors on a recent AI vision paper. In addition to doubling our research LP base, Andrew and I have joined forces with Pete Sonsini, an 18-year veteran that built his career investing in researcher founders including me and my Databricks and Perplexity co-founders.

I’m obsessed with researchers that have changed the world through open source and through startups, and I’m lucky to be one of them. I can’t wait to inspire, support, and fund ten more companies that move us all forward, just like Databricks and Perplexity have.