Seeking to serve pilgrims and improve their journeys

The purpose of technology is to increase people's creativity, productivity, wellness, and generally happiness, preferably for everyone non-zero sum. And great teams build great technology. I've enjoyed informally advising founder friends for about a decade now, and am finally stepping into my first investor role with Dash. My goal is still the same as it was back when I was officially in public service working with labs and such - support great teams building great technology that helps people. Founders and teams we believe in, support, and invested in:-Etched.ai | 50-100x more efficient inference for transformers (ASICs) -Graft.ai | Build AI apps quick and easy-Waldo.ai | Share data, stop fraud-Twine.ai | Ethical data labeling (no sweat shops here)-Hightouch.com (Series A) | fresh customer data into your toolsIf you're a potential customer of / partner to these startups, send me a DM or just reach out to them!If you're a potential or new founder, feel free to drop a line too. Happy to ideate / offer feedback.Will share specific theses and activities soon. Till then, open to chat with any to-be founders or startups and offer any help I can. Besides being an AI operator since the now olden days of AI and willing to engage in any sort of AI/design problem-solving, it turns out I have an arcane niche of helping startups navigate government and hard-to-disrupt legacy sectors like supply chain (it keeps on finding me, might as well run with it).

Mentoring wonderful companies coming out of the UChicago student and research ecosystem.Includes our Data and AI accelerator - Transform. Fun fact: both Polsky and Transform are among the most active 15 AI and data investors in the last 6 months (as of Sept 2023, Pitchbook)!

Jasper is the leading Generative AI Content Platform.Stood up our stellar AI team, which shipped the AI Engine (modular infra to serve the best model per use case), integrated closed and open source models, and the experimentation platform - a key to personalize outputs to user preferences. Also started and authored our patent program, and pushed the broader product to delight customers with values like personalization and end-to-end content management.

Built up AI Success, government vertical, data science, and system architecture teams. Until it became too large, had planned strategies and partnerships for most accounts in DataRobot Government, including piloting a partnership which would become a top 3 company partnership, and leading vertical’s “most successful account” which became a reference for nearly every other later client in DRGov, e.g. healthcare.-Directly led client and DataRobot teams to develop a US military branch’s analytics lab and deploy an finance AI app which redistributes nearly $2B a year used by over 1,500 professional end-users. The first success of its kind (solving “a half-century problem”).-Mentored or managed 30+ employees who went on to become high-performers. Revamped AI success hiring process to “world class," resulting in hiring 20+ high performing and diverse professionals (e.g. a Rhodes scholar, BCG partner).Led data science and AI success teams to delight clients and thus consistently beat sales and expansion targets-Successfully deployed or supported 20+ proof-of-value and at-client machine learning models across finance, airlines, marketing, supply chain, pricing, procurement, and other time series and MLOps use cases. Models often dramatically more accurate and usable than competitors’-Expanded revenue from a government client 7x in less than a year since initial contract, with additional renewals since Designed multiple new products, often as lead designer and interviewer, managing the UX/UI and engineering teams.-Lead designer for a “game-changing” fleet readiness prediction application that recommends actionable interventions (finance, logistics, supply chain, people). Demoed to 3-star generals and secretaries at US Army Forces Command. Built on time series, MLOps, and what-if simulations.-Hosted AI education webinars (500+ attendees, senior leaders) co-run with client innovator

I annually teach "Diplomacy & Defense," a simulation-centric graduate seminar focused the skills of collaborative intelligence to build policies and plans for complex, multi-agency policy cases. In Spring 2018, students created an impressive reconstruction plan for Syria across security, governance, development, and funding teams, working across institutional tools from the Departments of State and Defense.I am currently investing thought into a new workshop / course series on public interest technologies.

Clients ranged from public sector to technology innovators. Have served on new strategies to improving operations.Selected highlights:-Developed a regional and business function strategy for an equipment manufacturer, aiming to save 5% cost and increase revenue 9%-Developed high level strategy and capability/speed metrics for satellites R&D-Oversaw 2 “Go-lives” for 25 agencies in one of the largest, and rare, on-budget on-time state ERP rollouts-Made and launched a state governor transition’s plan for transport, transit, digital infrastructure-Created and helped deploy executive curricula and innovation strategy for 600+ executive leaders-Led a team of five to develop Firm’s analytic, methodological, and facilitation offerings in wargaming, housed in the central Strategy & Corporate Finance practice –shaped 8+ client teams-Performed diligences on the acquisition of new companies for PE firms

Obama Administration appointeeAdvisor to the Under Secretary of the Navy, key staffer supporting the “COO” of the Navy and Marines with anything she was facing, which was everything (strategy, operations, acquisitions, Congress, tech, etc.). Promoted from role in Stability Operations and Humanitarian Affairs office, White House Defense Fellow. -Awarded Secretary of Navy’s Meritorious Civilian Service award for work in naval robotics/AI and reform-Created task force (20 senior members) on integrating robotics and AI into the future Naval Force and Fleet. Output featured a wargame for 70+ leaders that led to a congressional proposal and plan -Built annual tech-operations forum and community on naval innovation; designed and funded programs for university-government tech collaboration, e.g. at the University of California – San Diego-Contributed to reform efforts such as Senate’s Goldwater-Nichols hearings and Naval Postgraduate SchoolAssisted the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Stability and Humanitarian Affairs (March – Oct 2015)-Advanced the stabilization portfolio, including re-issuing of the critical DoD Directive 3000.05, “Stabilization." Refined and advocated for concept “Defense Support to Stabilization” (DSS)-Revitalized transitional public security funded programs and policy, designed interagency wargame-Established agency’s disaster technology initiative, a collaboration with MIT Lincoln Laboratories-Wrote policy on NSC’s Fragile States’ Committee and a delegation to European & African CommandsRepresented Department of Defense on President Obama’s Detroit Working Group, a federal-urban initiative Worked with OSTP and DoD to support government work with startups (see relevant article written: "Opening the Door for Innovation in Government Procurement through Intrapreneurship" in The Journal of Science Policy & Governance.

My first startup, which failed. Most co-founders and team based out of the MIT Media Lab.I learned a ton, e.g. which technologies need government to support them and how (led to my advocating DoD to fund disaster tech via MIT LL), that I need to learn how business works even for public service, which later led to me joining McKinsey, and to not be afraid of any technology new to me, even material science, but to find great engineers and learn from them as we built.Led the engineering team to prototype new energy technology to help energy scarce environments use distributed grids, finalists in MIT100k, MIT Infinity Labs, and Mass Challenge. Used new additive manufacturing techniques.

Developed a predictive program to harness the "retweetability of political tweets" including a sub-program to automatically process the contents of images within tweets. Dealt with complex semantics problems. Used Python

Led discussion sections for "American Economic History" with Prof. John J Wallis, "International Politics of the Middle East" with Emma Sky (F13, S13), and "Approaches to International Security" (F12), which additionally focused on students' analytical writing skills. Students debated topics, performed current event simulations, and tied topics back into ethics and theory. I encouraged the use of new technologies in student presentations.

Led a small team to evaluate the efficacy of Yale's international education initiatives. Qualitative and quantitative data utilized.

Researched post-war economic and social development in Vietnam. Thereafter, visited other Southeast Asian countries.