Farbod Nowzad, John Josi, and Chandler Kowtko met at UC Berkeley and through their shared passion for entrepreneurship and world-changing companies, developed a potent network of the next generation of founders from UC Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, and other top institutions.

During and after their time together in Berkeley, the three developed founding and operating experience across product, data science, and finance at companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, Ramp, and Lime. While always connected professionally and personally, a FaceTime call from John one sunny afternoon in February 2021 kicked off a more formal partnership.

Iota Ventures was formed.

While they had a history of their own private investments across verticals, the partners' first investments as a firm include Vista, Odyssey, and HomeOptions. Co-investing alongside names such as Kleiner Perkins, Founder's Fund, Bling Capital, Buckley Ventures, Sam Altman, Sahil Bloom, and Austin Rief, the partners' portfolio companies have already achieved promising traction, including a 2.6x markup and admission to Y Combinator.

Confident in their investment process and to bridge it with their network and experiences, they built Weave, a community of hundreds of engineers, to aggregate talent, connect with founders, and source deals.

In addition to being a capital allocator, Iota Ventures is a talent allocator, community, and vehicle through which to galvanize builders toward creating the future.