Why I built TurboFund

I got my PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford in 1986. I spent the next twenty-plus years automating the physical design of integrated circuits. If you've used a computer chip made after 2003, some of my software may have touched it.

I started a company called Q Design Automation. We built the tools that handle the final step of chip design: making sure wires didn't short, met timing constraints, and could actually be manufactured. We grew to eight employees and millions in revenue before Cadence Design Systems acquired us. Our software ended up deployed everywhere chips are made.

After leaving Cadence I joined three angel groups: Astia Angels (women-led startups only), Band of Angels in the Bay Area, and E8 Angels in Seattle (clean tech only). I went from building automation tools for engineers to investing in founders building the future. And I noticed something. The fundraising process itself was one of the least automated, most broken workflows I'd ever seen.

I've sat on both sides of the fundraising table. On the investor side, we get inundated with applications. A couple of members look at everyone and toss eighty or ninety percent as unqualified, too early, or just not interesting enough. The applications that get reliable attention are the ones with a referral from someone we trust.

On the founder side, it's worse. I've mentored founders who spent a full year trying to fill out a single round. They research investors one at a time, fill out application forms for angel groups, upload pitch decks to different portals, and then try to keep track of a hundred-plus conversations in a spreadsheet. One person, working alone, doing what should be a team effort.

The structural problem runs deeper than the workflow. Wealth concentration is enormous, and it's primarily a class phenomenon. The top one percent across all nations holds a disproportionate share, and they tend to invest in people they're comfortable with, people from similar backgrounds. The systemic result: founders who don't have the right network, especially women and minorities, face a much steeper climb. There are wonderful exceptions. The pattern is still real.

That's what TurboFund is. An enriched investor database and fundraising pipeline, built for founders. Forty thousand-plus North American investors. Two hundred fifty thousand-plus contacts. VCs, angels, accelerators, family offices. Searchable by industry, funding stage, check size, and investments already made.

The database is half of it. The other half is the workspace I built alongside it. Founders, co-founders, and advisors all work out of the same pipeline. A lightweight CRM tracks every investor conversation. A basic data room shares materials with investors. Gmail integration sends outreach from the founder's own inbox. Upload a pitch deck and TurboFund drafts the outreach and autofills online applications and investor forms.

At the angel groups I've been part of, I've built internal tools to help investors manage the founders reaching out to them. That's the investor's side of the table. The bigger, more worthwhile problem was always on the founder's side. That's the one TurboFund is trying to solve.

I've made my mark. I've seen the Silicon Valley dream come true. My goal with TurboFund is to make fundraising a little more fair, and to give the next generation of founders a better shot.