Sonny Vu

I help founders build "hardtech" companies that will have a positive, planet-level impact. Investor, advisor, and/or director in 47 early stage companies (pre-seed to Series A). Themes in materials science, industrial biotech, sensors/semiconductors, HVAC, enterprise AI, digital health. Previously co-founded: * Impact Biosystems (2019)- novel muscle fitness sensing devices (Series Seed) * Elemental Machines (2014) - hardware and software for lab operations analytics (Series B) * Misfit (2011) - fashion-centric wearables and smart home devices (acquired by Fossil for $260m; served as President and CTO for Fossil Group afterward) * AgaMatrix (2001) - blood glucose monitors and digital health for diabetes (acquired by i-SENS) * FireSpout (1998) - ML / NLP for autosummarization (acquired by Ask Jeeves) Raised $257m in 22 rounds (Seed to Series C) for companies I’ve founded. Before startups, I worked at Microsoft Research in NLP under Kai-Fu Lee, worked on a PhD in linguistics at MIT under Noam Chomsky and Ken Hale, and studied math at UIUC. Outside of work, when I’m not playing with my two kids, I’m mostly trying to learn math / science / languages, or playing games. I’m here to help. If we haven't met, drop me a note.