As a recent addition to the SineWave team, I (Dawn M) thought I’d share my early impressions of how we work and why I so enjoy working with this team. In the process, I hope to give a flavor of how we differentiate ourselves and what we uniquely bring to all of our stakeholders.
Here at SineWave, we know where we thrive. We’re an early stage venture firm focused on delivering scalable technologies to significant, impending markets. That’s the easy part. What is harder, in our business, is to decide where the future is going and be there to shape, lead, and intersect it. That is what truly separates the wheat from the chaff.
We focus on three enablers to bring our best – the best – to our stakeholders: talent, technology, and tradecraft.
Talent: We have assembled a world class and diverse team of partners who regularly argue the thesis of the business for key emerging tech trends. Tightly paired with our innovators and entrepreneurs, our backgrounds and networks combine in unique ways to result in broad market coverage and consumption.
Technology: We have an amazing portfolio of technical innovations and capabilities focused on solving, at scale, imminent and sizeable market challenges. A number of these already represent successful exits through IPO or acquisition.
Tradecraft: Finally, because of our depth and breadth of technical and business acumen, our investment theses have proven remarkably adept in identifying, moving into, and growing markets utilizing – and informing – our portfolio holdings.
We’re going to drill into each of these areas in two posts to give you a flavor of how Sinewave works to provide best-in-class performance and why so many enterprises choose us to partner. And when you find us compelling, give us a shout!
Who do we think we are? (Talent)
All of our partners and advisors have worked together successfully in previous lives, so we hand select each other and understand what each of us brings to solving the toughest challenges in a variety of environments. We have a breadth and depth of experience few in our category can match. Our interactions are humbling, interesting, informed, honest, and invigorating. Active learning occurs in every session; it keeps us all engaged and thinking hard about our investment potentials. Read on for a quick sketch of the team…
Yanev, our founder, has identified and advised a plethora of early stage companies. He built the first Federal Loan Program to the tune of $150B under both the Bush and Obama administrations. His educational background is a who’s who of higher educational institutions: Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and Sydney Law. He’s the voice of potential market commercialization in all of our discussions.
Pat, a general partner, is a heavy hitting cybersecurity and computation expert who has served in a variety of tactical through strategic positions in the US national security apparatus. She, likewise, holds degrees from Fordham and Yale. She’s the professional cynic on the team with a high bar for technical depth and pragmatism.
Dave, a venture partner, is a cryptologic savant who expanded into machine learning, data mining, and analytics long before it was cool. He had a sustained, successful career at the NSA, developing a keen ear for separating technological wheat from chaff. He’s the deep dive guru whose technical stamp of approval is essential for investment.
Howard, a venture partner, put Databricks on the map in the US Federal space, leading the build out of coverage to over 50 agencies. He grew up at Cray and IBM and was all over open source and big data before they were “things”. He’s the business case / identifiable market space gangsta for the team.
Ezinne, a venture partner, drove space innovation and associated policy at NASA and throughout the Executive Branch. She has deep academic credentials combined with experience as a startup founder. She continuously challenges status quo and brings unique business and tech “why nots?” that substantively change conversations.
Donna, a venture partner, brought cybersecurity to fruition for the globe through her roles at Commerce and NIST. The “go to” cybersecurity guru for Commerce, she established enduring standards that support competitive and emergent cybersecurity, then leveraged that into building out the NSF’s portfolio to fuel the industry. She’s the “get ‘er done” source for innovative and early teaming with government and industry.
Nikesh, a venture partner, has 25 years investing and operating in Silicon Valley. He’s been a senior operator at Equinix and Palo Alto Networks. He’s the experienced realist operational voice for the investment team and our portfolio companies.
Brian, a venture partner, has deep expertise in multiple phenomenologies, maintaining ties with USG special activities in multiple operational domains. He continues to find, and define, the hardest of the hard problems that serve as bell weathers for the near future – to challenge our operational theses and our entrepreneurs.
Oliver, a venture partner, specializes in social venture with an eye to impacting the world for good. He’s champions measurably impactful initiatives and is an active voice for social conscience on the team.
Dawn, a venture partner, specializes in identifying and operationalizing emergent tech for the hardest problems. With a focus on leveraging investment for commercial and government use, she focuses on pragmatic innovations whose time is on the cusp of useful employment.
Combined with a great team of professionals that keep us focused, keep the wheels on day-to-day business, and close daily with our entrepreneurs, our broad and deep expertise and complementary backgrounds provide a unique and lucrative perspective in a highly competitive environment.
I’ll dive a bit deeper on Technology and Tradecraft in my next post.
