XFUND - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- President of Harvard Student Agencies
Job Titles:
- Advisor to
- Managing Partner, Cambridge Innovation Capital
Andrew is an Advisor to Xfund. He is the Managing Partner of Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) at the University of Cambridge, UK. Specializing in technology investments, Andrew also has hands-on experience building technology businesses and a venture investing background.
Job Titles:
- Founder and President of MIT Undergraduate Capital Partners
Job Titles:
- Professor of Technology and Public Policy, Harvard
Brandon Farwell is a General Partner at Xfund. Prior to Xfund, he was an Investment Professional at DFJ focused on software investments including Box (NYSE: BOX), Yammer (acq., MSFT), Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), Newsle (acq., LNKD), SugarCRM, and Insight Squared, in addition to other frontier investments like Planet and SpaceX. After DFJ, he helped build the 150-company portfolio at Rothenberg Ventures nearly from the beginning, including companies like SpaceX, Planet, Robinhood, Gusto, Matterport, Bustle, Revel Systems, Boom Supersonic, Kespry, Andela, Dronebase, Nearpod, Patreon, Vicarious Surgical, SweetIQ (acq., GCI), Accelo, Customer.io, and others. This portfolio was awarded #1 in VR /AR and frontier technology by Goldman Sachs, CB Insights, and Pitchbook.
Brandon spent time in sales operations and corporate development at Box. His passions and focus are mainly in enterprise technologies; notably applied machine intelligence (computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning), VR/AR, robotics, space, and autonomous vehicles. He has been named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 Venture Capital list. Brandon is currently a formal advisor to CASIS, the organization designated by NASA to manage, promote, and broker research on the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory.
David Rapp is an Advisor to Xfund. He is currently an MBA Candidate at Harvard Business School where he is an active member of the entrepreneurship community, and he enjoys helping founders scale their early-stage ventures.
Before Harvard, David worked on solving complex strategy, operations, and venture building challenges across a wide range of industries as a consultant at McKinsey. David also helped the U.K. scale its COVID-19 testing capacity as Head of Operations Policy for In-Person Testing at the Department of Health.
David graduated Summa Cum Laude from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University with a year abroad at the University of Oxford reading Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. He enjoys endurance sports, and he has climbed Kilimanjaro, completed a 70.3 Ironman, and run an ultra-marathon.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Member of the Academy of Arts
Debora Spar is an Advisor to Xfund. She is the MBA Class of 1952 Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean at Harvard Business School where she teaches the first-year Strategy course. Her current research focuses on issues of gender and technology, and the interplay between technological change and broader social structures. Spar tackles some of these issues in her latest book The Virgin and the Plow: How Technology Shapes How we Live and Love.
Spar served as the President of Barnard College from 2008 to 2017, and as President and CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from 2017 to 2018. During her tenure at Barnard, Spar led initiatives to highlight women's leadership and advancement, including the creation of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and the development of Barnard's Global Symposium series.
Spar is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as a director of Value Retail LLC and a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has also served as a Director of Goldman Sachs and a trustee of the Markle and Wallace Foundations. Spar earned her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and her B.S. from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
Job Titles:
- Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Frank is an advisor to Xfund. He is the John A. Paulson Dean of the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he also is the John A. & Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor. Prior to that he was the Mellichamp Professor at UC Santa Barbara, where he was the Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Director of the UCSB/MIT/Caltech Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, and the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering. He has also held faculty appointments at Purdue University and the University of Delaware, and held visiting positions at DuPont, Weyerhaeuser, and Stuttgart University. He has been recognized as a Fellow of multiple professional organizations including: IEEE, IFAC, AIMBE, and the AAAS. He is the President for the IEEE Control Systems Society, and is the Vice President of the International Federation of Automatic Control. In 2005, he was awarded the Computing in Chemical Engineering Award from the AIChE for his innovative work in systems biology, and in 2015 received the Control Engineering Practice Award from the American Automatic Control Council for his development of the artificial pancreas. His research interests are in systems biology, network science, modeling and analysis of circadian rhythms, and drug delivery for diabetes.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Computer Science
- Professor of Computer Science, Harvard
Job Titles:
- Advisor to
- Managing Partner of the E14 Fund, MIT
- Young Global Leader
Habib is an Advisor to Xfund. He is a serial entrepreneur and an early stage investor, and the Managing Partner of E14 Fund, the MIT Media Lab affiliated fund that invests in early companies from the MIT Media Lab community. Prior, he was founding CEO of Wamda, the largest platform of programs and networks that aims to accelerate and invest in entrepreneurship ecosystems across the Middle East and North Africa region. His work in the MENA region is credited with playing a key role in strengthening its nascent entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Harry is a Venture Partner with Xfund. He is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on computer science and on higher education. A member of the Harvard faculty since 1974, he created and for decades oversaw much of Harvard's undergraduate computer science program. Harry has helped launch thousands of Harvard undergraduates, including both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, into careers in computer science. His book about higher education, Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future? was translated into Chinese (in both Taiwanese and mainland editions) and Korean. He is coauthor, with Hal Abelson and Ken Ledeen, of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion (translated into Russian and Chinese), which explains the origins and public consequences of the explosion of digital information. His most recent book, with Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, is the collection What's College For? The Public Purpose of Higher Education. The editors contributed the lead essay, Renewing the Civic Mission of American Higher Education.
Jadyn is a Vice President at Xfund. Prior to Xfund, she was the Chief Strategy Officer of Harvard Student Agencies (HSA), the largest student-run company in the world, with 12 separate business units, over 600 employees and over 50 managers. Leading up to her role as the CSO, Jadyn was the Chief People Officer of HSA. In her years in the C-suite, she led the strategic development of the company, updated the compliance standards of the business, and drove innovation at the company which resulted in the creation of new agencies.
Job Titles:
- Advisor to
- Interim CEO and CFO, Oxford Science Enterprises
Jim is an Advisor to Xfund. He was appointed Chief Financial Officer of Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) in 2015, where he has been an integral part of the team that has invested in over 40 spin-outs from the University of Oxford and has raised over £600m in investment funds from strategic investors. He held similar positions at Lonrho Holdings Limited between 2013 and March 2015, Sportingbet plc from 2008 to 2013, Johnson Service Group plc 2004 to 2007 and Informa Group Plc 1997 to 2004. He trained as an accountant with Deloitte, where he worked for 8 years. Since November 2019, Jim was interim Chief Executive Officer of OSE.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard
Michael D. Smith is an Advisor to Xfund. He is the John H. Finley, Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University. He recently spent 11 years as the Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, leading Harvard's oldest and largest school. His leadership was characterized by a deep commitment to undergraduate teaching, to a tenure-track system, and to research, both fundamental and applied. He was actively involved in Harvard and MIT's launch of edX, and he served on its board from 2012-2018. Earlier in his career, Mike spent time in industry building a range of computing hardware for Honeywell Information Systems, and in 2001, he co-founded the data security company Liquid Machines, which was acquired in 2010 by Check Point Software Technologies. Mike has degrees from Princeton University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Stanford University. While at Harvard, he received a prestigious National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award and the Alpha Iota Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He is currently writing a book on teaching, and when not in the classroom, he enjoys exploring the interplay of technology with other fields, from the life sciences to business to education.
Job Titles:
- Managing General Partner
- Partner
Patrick is Managing General Partner of Xfund. Prior to Xfund, Patrick was a partner at NEA and led the firm's consumer and seed investment practices. He is a director of 23andMe (NASDAQ: ME) and Philo, and led investments in Guideline, IFTTT, NewtonX, ThirdLove, and Zumper. Past investments include Segment (acquired by Twilio), Kensho (acquired by S&P Global), Plaid (almost acquired by Visa), Pulse (acquired by LinkedIn), Loopt (acquired by Green Dot), GoodGuide (acquired by Underwriters Laboratories), Ravel Law (acquired by Lexis-Nexis), Xfire (acquired by Viacom), and Xoom (NASDAQ: XOOM). Prior to joining NEA, Patrick helped to grow ZEFER, an Internet services firm (acquired by NEC) to more than $100 million in annual revenues and more than 700 people across six global offices. Prior to ZEFER, Patrick was with McKinsey & Company, where he specialized in hardware, software, and services companies.
Patrick received a joint JD-MBA degree from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, where he served as an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Patrick was a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a Master of Science degree. Patrick earned his A.B. degree at Harvard College in Environmental Science. He is a member of the New York and Massachusetts bars, was an elected director of the Harvard Alumni Association, and a member of the Committee to Visit Harvard College. He is also an Associate of the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of the Bay Area Node for NSF I - Corps
Rhonda Shrader is the Executive Director of the Bay Area Node for NSF I-Corps as well as the Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program, where she teaches two popular lean startup courses, Lean Transfer and Startup Disco. As an entrepreneur, she was an early team member of MIT spinout Organogenesis, one of the first publicly traded regenerative medicine companies. She has founded or was an early stage team member of startups in biotech, behavioral health, non-profit, retail and AI. She is an active advisor for NASA spinoff BrainAid as well as the Innovation Chair for Invisible International. She earned an undergraduate degree in neuropsychology and premedical studies from Harvard and an MBA from Berkeley-Haas.
Job Titles:
- Director of Community Engagement at Stanford
Job Titles:
- Managing Director at Collegiate Capital Patners