Most of what I look for can't be found in a deck. The best signals of a Twelve Below Company to me are not buried in the metrics slide. The signals are in how a founder talks about the problem they’re obsessed with solving—in the details, the care, the conviction. They’re in the story of why they’re building it, and why they’re the only ones who can bring it to life. Many founders have told me, years after we first met, that I saw something in them before they fully saw it in themselves. I don't think that early belief comes from intuition as much as paying attention to the founder traits that rarely make it into the pitch materials.

I grew up in Buffalo taking things apart transfixed with the idea of understanding how and why they worked. This deep curiosity eventually led me to operating roles at startups, angel investing, partner roles at Lerer Hippeau and Collaborative Fund, and ultimately to launching Twelve Below. Across every chapter, the goal has felt similar: find exceptional people early, earn their trust, and help them build something that matters from scratch.At Twelve Below, we lead or co-lead $1–3 million pre-seed and seed investments, often before a product is live. Whether it is recruiting a co-founder, preparing for a fundraise, working through product strategy, or helping navigate the inevitable difficult moments, my hope is that founders feel like they have another builder in the room.

Many of the most interesting companies are created at the intersection of disciplines. These companies come from founders who can connect two worlds in a way that feels obvious once you see it, but nearly invisible beforehand. They are standing somewhere the rest of us are not yet. This idea inspired the name Twelve Below. That idea inspired the name Twelve Below. It's the first moment you can see the horizon before the sun rises (when the sun is twelve degrees below the horizon), when the journey ahead is still difficult to make out, but you can begin to see what's coming if you look carefully enough. That's my favorite time to meet a founder.