AMPLIFY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor in the Machine Learning Department at CMU
- Chief Scientist, Determined AI
- Venture Partner
Ameet Talwalkar is an assistant professor in the Machine Learning Department at CMU. He also co-founded and served as Chief Scientist at Determined AI until its recent acquisition by HPE. His interests are in the field of statistical machine learning.
His current work is motivated by the goal of democratizing machine learning, with a focus on topics related to automation, interpretability, and distributed learning. He led the initial development of the MLlib project in Apache Spark, co-authored the textbook ‘Foundations of Machine Learning,' and created an award-winning edX MOOC on distributed machine learning.
He also helped to create the MLSys conference, serving as the inaugural Program Chair in 2018, General Chair in 2019, and currently as President of the MLSys Board.
Job Titles:
- CEO, Luma AI and Former Computer Vision Systems Engineer
Tim came in and identified concrete gaps in our sales motion that immediately accelerated our growth. There's really nothing more helpful than that.
Sunil is an incredibly rare kind of investor. He gets behind the thesis of your business, tells you what he thinks clearly and without judgment, and gives you the room to make the best decisions you can. Most importantly, nobody is better when things get hard, and they always get hard.
Job Titles:
- CEO and CO - FOUNDER at HEX
Mark helped our company scale before we had a full executive team. His mentorship, feedback, and engagement during our CRO search was indispensable.
Job Titles:
- CTO, Hex and Former Software Engineering Leader
Job Titles:
- Entrepreneur - in - Residence
Carl is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Amplify Partners.He is currently working on a stealth company focused on edge computing and application state management. He believes that data should be able to move to where it's needed and be unlocked from cloud providers all while maintaining correctness and keeping costs low. Ultimately, applications should be able to easily operate within an "offline-first" and "local-first" context.
Prior to joining Amplify Partners, Carl spent a decade at SingleStore (fka MemSQL) where he held various roles, including Director of Engineering and Senior Director of the company's incubation lab. During his tenure at SingleStore, Carl worked on a wide range of projects including: streaming systems, Wasm extensibility, managed services, real time dashboards, large scale testing infrastructure, and deep Spark integrations. He also co-invented SingleStore's real-time data retrieval patent.
Prior to SingleStore, Carl was an intern and early engineer at Mixpanel where he worked on many features including segmentation, funnel analysis, and events. At Mixpanel, Carl had an early taste of big data analytics and the capabilities of the web platform to support complex applications.
Job Titles:
- CEO, Eppo and Former Data Scientist
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO Chainguard
I am convinced that Renee can see the future. Her clarity of vision, founder empathy, and technical depth combine to make her a trustworthy advisor. From the Friday afternoon text messages to the formalisms of the board meeting, I find myself continually impressed by how generously she gives of her time and wisdom.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Buddybuild
Job Titles:
- CEO and CO - FOUNDER at REPLICATED
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO Intellimize
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO at Scribe
Very few VCs have the intellectual capacity, functional experience, and the innate desire to partner and help founders as Mike does. I have hugely benefited from Mike as our Seed investor; as I reflect, it was one of my best decisions.
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Executive
- Design Executive - in - Residence
Joshua Goldenberg is an Executive-in-Residence at Amplify Partners.
He has worked in the field of Design for over 25 years, on everything from brand and information design, to data-synthesis platforms, to Oscar-nominated software for filmmaking. As an executive and senior leader, he built and led the international Design organizations at Palantir, Slack, and Loom.
As an active startup advisor, Joshua helps founders and early-stage designers grow sustaining Design teams that build outstanding products. His personal advisory portfolio includes: Affinity, Productboard, Loom, Mosaic, Tonic, Stage, and more.
At Amplify, Joshua works with our founders and early-stage designers on the practice of designing great products and teams. He contributes on product and design feedback, design systems, hiring and pipeline design, organizational development for Design, and operationalizing Design across the business.
In his spare time, he does rock-crawling and camping on Jeep trails in the Northern California backcountry. He lives in the Western Sierra-Nevada foothills with his family.
Joshua has played a crucial role in shaping our company's design organization, processes, and hiring. His ability to understand complex problems and provide specific feedback is one of his strongest suits. If you're looking for someone to help you navigate through the scaling challenges while maintaining a healthy design culture, Joshua is the best.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO at SiMa.Ai
Mike cared deeply about my journey as an entrepreneur. He was more than just an investor - he was a partner in the business. He found the right balance of pushing me when needed, empathizing in times of doubt, and rolled up his sleeves, and helped whenever I needed him to. I'm eagerly anticipating the time when we work together again.
"Lenny believed in our company before any other investor did. He understands how to build companies for developers and his advice has been irreplaceable."
Maret Delf - Chief Legal Officer, COO
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- General Counsel
Mark is an invaluable resource and an extension of our team. He's in our Slack, I always text him and call him weekly. He knows how people buy technical products and companies' challenges as they go through it for the first time.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO Fermyon
Renee brings a positive, high-impact, empathetic approach to the board room. She is a thoughtful leader, culture cultivator, and advisor.
One of the many great privileges of building Scribe has been getting to do it with Mike. Outside my team, he's my first call when working through a difficult problem. Mike is my go-to whether it's advice, an intro, or even tough love.
Mike is a lover of the outdoors. Pictured here in front of the Wasatch Mountain Range where he loves to ski and hike.
Renee has been helpful at every step of the way. She gave great advice from our first intro, through the fundraising process, and even helped close candidates. She's been an invaluable resource for our company.
Sarah knows her stuff and always goes the extra mile. Her level of engagement, focus and follow-through continues to blow us away.
I have very high expectations for my venture investors and Amplify Partners has exceeded all of them. I cannot think of a better partner for an early-stage entrepreneur.
Job Titles:
- Co - CEO, Hightouch and Former Engineer
Job Titles:
- Chief Technologist, OctoML
Job Titles:
- Operating Partner
- Vice President at Domino Data Lab
Tim Babcock is an Operating Partner at Amplify Partners. He is a world-class go-to-market leader with years of experience building and leading sales teams at data companies like Domino Data Lab and Platfora. He has taken sales teams from $2 - $40+ million in revenue and has carved out a valuable niche building the strategies and teams to bring very early-stage, disruptive products to market.
At Amplify, Tim works side-by-side with Amplify's portfolio companies to build and execute a go-to-market plan that is unique to their business and customers. Tim specializes in helping technical founding teams in evangelical markets define their go-to-market motion, recruit successful teams, and lay the groundwork for hyper-growth through organizational design.
As a Vice President at Domino Data Lab, Tim joined in late 2016 and scaled the business adding 10x the revenue, and led a team of 50+ in less than 3 years. In his time at Domino, Tim ran many functions across his tenure, including Sales, Technical Sales, Business Development, and Customer Success.
Earlier in his career, Tim worked in Big Data startups, including Wibidata & Platfora, where he was VP of Sales during the Platfora and Workday acquisition in mid-2016.
Tim lives in Connecticut with his wife and two kids. In his free time, he likes to golf, lift weights and get to the beach as much as possible.
Tim has been instrumental in shaping our go-to-market motion and strategy. He's helped us accelerate growth in some areas while also helping us avoid potential missteps.