Episode 382 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Abe Murray, General Partner at AlleyCorp.
I recently had Matthias Hofmann, the Co-Founder & CEO of Eyebot on the podcast, and when I was doing my research on the company, I realized that their recent investment from AlleyCorp was led by one of their partners who was located in the Boston area.
It made me pause, as I didn’t realize that AlleyCorp had someone in the local Boston area. If you are not familiar with AlleyCorp, it is the venture fund started by Kevin Ryan who is a tech icon in NYC. Kevin led DoubleClick’s growth to an IPO and acquisition by Google. He’s also a co-founder of MongoDB, Business Insider, Zola, Gilt Groupe, and many others. AlleyCorp was backed as a family office by Kevin until last year when it became an institutional VC firm through the announcement of its $250M Fund I which includes outside LPs for the first time.
Abe is leading AlleyCorp’s deep tech investments, so it just makes sense that he is based in the the Boston area, as there is such a high concentration of innovation and companies in the Northeast.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics like:
- Abe’s background story which includes dropping out of high school to run fishing boats & factories in the family aquaculture business and the importance of growing up with a chip on your shoulder.
- Starting his career at BAE Systems where he worked on Generative AI and advanced technologies for the defense industry.
- Going to Harvard Business School and working on a startup called Doodbleboard, an online whiteboard.
- Landing at Google, then later Alphabet, where he worked on various AI/ML initiatives, as well as the Android mobile team with Rich Miner.
- Taking on the healthcare industry and leading the Boston office for Verily, an Alphabet company.
- Getting into angel investing and how he landed at AlleyCorp.
- All the details about AlleyCorp and the investments they are making across the firm, plus the specifics about what Abe is targeting.
- The importance of storytelling and advice on how to get great at it.
- And so much more.
