Databases
I co-founded Materialize, a database startup, with Frank McSherry. I was the founding CEO.
I worked at Cockroach Labs as a software engineer, working mainly on SQL query execution and performance engineering.
Computer Science
I received a PhD in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania. My PhD was on distributed systems that provided differentially private guarantees when processing data across federated security and privacy domains.
I knew quickly that I didn’t want to be an academic, nor did I care deeply about privacy, but I found the experience of getting a PhD extremely rewarding. The problems I was solving were contrived, but solving them required leveraging theorem provers, type systems, databases, deterministic runtimes, compilers, and distributed systems. Overall, a fantastic computer science education.
Investing
I invest in technical founders at Amplify Partners.
Writing
I’ve collected some of my past writings on this blog, and intend to continue such writing from time to time. I expect writing to be infrequent - only when I really feel like I have something unique to add - so expect the burden on your inbox to be occasional.