Why subscribe?
Thanks for visiting. I am a venture investor that has led a number of technology investments, most recently in the Quantum industry. This Substack page will cover some broad topics about the details of Quantum Technologies, the immense potential they hold, and some advances being made. It will also include current developments, company profiles and thoughts on investment opportunities.
I originally began the Quantum Leap blog in 2021 so will be updating, editing and porting over some of those original posts to this new platform, interspersing some new posts in the process. I will be releasing posts 2-4 times per month typically late on a Friday, so hope you can enjoy reading them over your weekends.
I’ve had success in my career in synthesizing very difficult topics into “layman” terms, so I aim to do that with Quantum via these posts. I hope they are helpful and informative and welcome feedback and discussions. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to taking this exciting “quantum leap” together.
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A Little About Me and This Page
After a BA in economics from Union College and an MBA from the Booth School of Business, I’ve been in the investment industry for most of my career and have led the investment activities at Corporate Fuel for nearly 20 years, where we have had a number of technology investments, including our latest in Vescent Technologies, which is a fantastic “picks and shovels” supplier to virtually the entire quantum ecosystem. I typically roll-up my sleeves and take active roles in the investments, so have some unique and direct experience helping propel technologies to market.
I remember being intrigued by “computers” as a high school student in the late 70’s. Personal Computers (PC’s) were not yet available, but I bought a Sinclair ZX80 at Radio Shack in 1980 and tried to teach myself how to program it. I was awed by the potential, and fascinated by the details, and wrote a few simple bits of code.
In college I took some basic “business” computing (FORTRAN and COBOL) but wasn’t particularly drawn to programming and those languages were kludgy and certainly were not user friendly (I remember spending hours searching for missing punctuation marks…but I digress).
During my senior year in college, I convinced my father to get me my first computer (and Apple IIc) so I could write my senior thesis, which was a great tool for basic text editing, but couldn’t readily do much more. By the time I was graduating from college (1980’s), PCs were beginning to become more accessible, although were still not very user-friendly. This was before GUI (graphical user interface) or WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) functionality, so lots of trial and error just to print out a page. Neither my Apple IIc nor my computer at my first job (investment banking) even had a hard drive. At that first job, I put the 5 1/4″ Lotus123 version 1.0 disc in the A-drive and a blank disc in the B-drive, where the spreadsheet files were saved.
Fast forward just a few years, and there were AOL discs available EVERYWHERE. I was an early adopter of email and general on-line access (over a 1,200 baud modem for much of the early period), so was actively participating in the computing revolution, although generally passively.
However, despite being an “investment professional” I missed the opportunities to buy Microsoft or Google or Facebook. I have often regretted not doing more with my Sinclair ZX80 or my Apple IIc or my first few “IBM clones” so that I could appreciate the potential of personal computing and the Internet, which presumably would’ve helped me become an early investor. Too bad because if I had invested $5,000 into Microsoft’s IPO in 1986, it would be worth over $29 million today PLUS dividends, which would be yielding over $225,000 per year!
In addition to that general proximity to the computer/Internet wave, I have always been fascinated by theoretical physics. I was intrigued by relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory and read dozens of books on those subjects. (It helped that when in graduate school, the student across the hall from my dorm room was getting his doctorate in theoretical physics and indulged me on countless evenings, explaining yet again how length and time shrank as speed increased…) I read nearly everything written by Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene and others and have recently consumed as much as I can regarding quantum computing and related technologies.
As I began to see my theoretical physics and computing science interests merging…and started to learn about Quantum Computing, I pledged to myself not to miss out on the investment opportunities this time. So, I have been on a personal journey to satisfy my cravings for learning about quantum theory and its applications to computing, while at the same time focusing on where the commercial opportunities may be. And like the adage goes, “if you really want to learn something you should teach it,” so the Quantum Leap was born, mainly to help educate myself, but also to share details about this exciting industry with others.
Rules of Engagement
Understanding quantum theory or how Quantum Computers work is immensely difficult and challenging, so if you have evolved some proficiency and aptitude, it’s okay to pound your chest a bit. But everyone starts from the beginning, and it is generally a long, non-linear journey, so I ask anyone reading or reacting to posts to do so with some humility. There are no dumb questions and no taboo topics, so please be respectful and constructive in commenting. If I, or someone responding, make a mistake, it’s okay to point that out if it helps the broader analysis, but it’s less helpful if it’s just to prove a point or convey superior knowledge for the sake of it. My general hope is that most concepts described in this blog are readily understood by laymen and deep practitioners alike and that we can all engage in spirited discussions that help expand our collective understanding and learnings in this rapidly evolving field.
Disclaimer: I am a venture investor with investment interests in quantum and may have an investment interest in companies covered on this site. The views expressed herein are solely my own and are not necessarily the views of Corporate Fuel or any of its affiliates or any companies it has investment interests in. Views are not intended to provide and should not be relied upon for investment advice.
