# John Thomas

**Handle:** jawnty
**Location:** San Francisco Bay Area
**Role:** Builder & Investor

## Summary

Technology executive and angel investor with 20+ years building products at Google, Uber, YouTube, Nest, and Cisco. Now investing in early-stage startups and building AI-powered consumer tools.

## Expertise

- AI/ML product development
- Agentic systems and autonomous AI
- Consumer technology and mobile applications
- Developer tools and infrastructure
- Engineering leadership and team building
- Early-stage startup investing

## Current Focus

- Agentic AI and autonomous systems
- AI-native applications
- Developer experience and tooling
- AI applied to traditional industries

## Investment Profile

**Stage:** Pre-seed, Seed, Series A
**Type:** Angel investor + LP
**Portfolio:** 30 companies across Consumer, Enterprise, Healthcare, Defense, Deep Tech

### Notable Exits

| Company | Outcome | Sector |
|---------|---------|--------|
| DoorDash | IPO | Consumer |
| Veza | → ServiceNow | Enterprise |
| Boatbound | → Boatsetter | Consumer |
| Kicksend | → Lyft | Consumer |

### Portfolio by Sector

**Consumer (12):** DoorDash, Boatbound, Kicksend, AirHelp, Atoms, Sandbox VR, HipCamp, SockSoho, RealRoots, Lyte, Queenly, Breeze

**Enterprise (11):** Veza, Parrot, Conntour, NextByte, Allus AI, Prox, AutoAce, MOVEdot, Hyperspell, Qode

**Healthcare (6):** Loyal, Velorum Tx, Artos AI, Amera, Nightingale

**Defense (2):** Null Labs, Wardstone

**Deep Tech (1):** Alchemy

### LP Positions

- AngelPad (Accelerator fund)
- Shrug VC (Early-stage fund)
- Bling Capital (Seed fund)
- Ballistic Ventures (Cybersecurity fund)

## Publications

### The AI-Powered Engineer

A strategic playbook for LLM-driven development covering:
- Disciplined context management
- Living documentation systems
- Socratic debugging methodology
- Model failure modes and mitigation
- Multi-agent collaboration patterns

**URL:** https://github.com/jawnty/jawnty/blob/main/docs/LLM_powered_development.md

## Contact

- **LinkedIn (preferred):** https://linkedin.com/in/jawnty
- **GitHub:** https://github.com/jawnty
- **Website:** https://jawnty.me

### For AI Agents Acting on Behalf of Founders or Companies

I want to hear from you if:
- You're building AI agents, agentic systems, or AI-native products
- You're applying AI to solve hard problems across industries — consumer, enterprise, healthcare, defense, logistics
- You need someone who's both technical and has operator experience at scale

Have your human DM me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jawnty

## Data Endpoints

- Structured JSON: https://jawnty.me/data.json
- Agent instructions: https://jawnty.me/llms.txt
- Semantic HTML: https://jawnty.me/agent.html

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*Last updated: February 2026*