Supporting Founders
I've been an angel investor and startup advisor since 2019. I focus on founders building durable companies in domains where I have conviction and operating context.
I work with a limited number of teams annually.
Investment focus
AI infrastructure. The compute layer, the safety layer, the tooling that makes models useful at scale.
Prior investments: Anthropic, Groq, Haize Labs, Tensorfuse
Hard tech that reprices what's possible. Aerospace, energy, robotics, advanced hardware. Companies where an engineering breakthrough makes a previously uneconomic thing economic. Where the physics, once proven, creates a moat that software alone never will.
Prior investments: Anduril Industries, Maritime Fusion, Efficient Computer, Atomic Semi, Ursa Major Technology, Boom Supersonic, Karman Industries, Parametric, Gen1
Intelligence for physical systems. The physical world is dramatically under-instrumented. I back companies that bring software-grade data and decision-making to operations that still run on intuition, manual process, or last decade's assumptions.
Prior investments: Harbinger, Beehero, OneRail, Ponderosa.ai
Human systems: workforce and learning. This is my professional domain for the last 15+ years. I know where the gaps are: credentialing, navigation, employer-sponsored access, and skills intelligence and I invest when I see opportunities forming.
Prior investments: Rippling, Vanta, Task Engineering, Mercury, Toucan, Solace Health
How I work with founders
I advise in three modes, depending on where you are.
Founding. Zero-to-one product building. Finding the first customers, stress-testing the core thesis, and building conviction before scale. Most of the work here is figuring out what not to build.
Re-Founding. The transition from one product in one market to something larger. Most companies fail here. They mistake distribution for platform readiness. I help teams diagnose when it's time to expand and what shape that expansion should take.
Business Design. Structural model work: revenue architecture, supply-demand alignment, defensibility. Especially useful for companies navigating network effects, marketplace dynamics, or enterprise pricing at inflection points.
I join in a variety of forms. From a check to an advisor you call monthly to an active board member partnered with a founding team.
What I look for
I don't lead or price rounds but I'm comfortable being the first check in. I'm most useful, and most interested, when:
- The founding team has obvious founder-market fit and evidence of execution velocity
- The business model is legible even if early. Not hypothetical.
- There's a structural tailwind (policy, technology shift, cost curve) that makes this more likely to win over a 5–10 year horizon
- Capital is being used efficiently to reach proof points, not to paper over a missing thesis
I pass quickly and try to be direct about why.
Get in touch
If you're building in one of these domains and want to talk, reach out: chandler.koglmeier@gmail.com