- Tim Tully taught himself to code when he was six and went to highschool for pc science.
- He began his profession in software program engineering at startups and later labored at Yahoo and Splunk.
- He joined VC agency Menlo Ventures in 2021 and has invested in generative AI startups like Pinecone.
Enterprise capitalist Tim Tully’s programming expertise started at age six, when he taught himself to put in writing code and make video video games on an Apple II pc. Quick-forward to the current: Tully has an information heart in a basement and is understood to deploy software program and check out startups’ APIs when he is sussing out potential investments. He is additionally written code for a few of his portfolio corporations.
Utilizing his technical experience as a former programmer and CTO, Tully helps amass a formidable portfolio of AI startups at Menlo Ventures.
The agency, which has backed Chime, Warby Parker, Roku, and Uber, has traditionally centered broadly on early and growth-stage startups throughout the buyer, enterprise, and healthcare sectors.
Extra just lately, Menlo has planted its flag within the generative AI area as frenzy within the sector is creating new alternatives for early-stage startups. The agency closed a $1.35 billion fund final yr particularly for investing in fledgling AI startups, and it is already been an early backer of AI powerhouses together with vector database Pinecone, LLM developer Anthropic, enterprise information cleaner Unstructured, conversational AI system Neon, automated information cleanup program Cleanlab, and lots of others.
For Tully, one in every of Menlo’s key check-writers on this area, having a background in pc science and working expertise has been mandatory with regards to evaluating potential AI investments.
“I am nonetheless coding daily,” he mentioned. “That basically helps me for my job, and I believe it is actually arduous to be a VC and spend money on a deeply technical product if you do not have a technical background. I am truly utilizing these things.”
Earlier than changing into a VC, Tully labored at startups and led engineering groups
For Tully, who grew up within the Bay Space, computer systems and video games have all the time been a core a part of his life. He had an Apple II pc and cassette tape participant that plugged right into a TV on a rolling cart, which is the place he taught himself to code by enjoying video video games and studying by way of manuals.
He mentioned an early recreation of his, coded utilizing Applesoft BASIC, was a text-based journey recreation during which gamers would get misplaced in a forest and navigate by way of a maze, answering a collection of fork-in-the-road puzzles to chase down the treasure.
As an adolescent, Tully had a financial institution of modems at his mother’s home to prepare a bulletin board system – a pre-internet pc server that different customers may dial into – to host pirated video video games.
After school, Tully gravitated in direction of startups, changing into a software program engineer at Dot-com period corporations iScale and Pillar Information Techniques, the latter of which was acquired by Oracle in 2003. He then spent the subsequent 14 years at Yahoo, working his method as much as lead engineering for Yahoo!, AOL, and its media properties, which included Huffington Publish, Tumblr, Polyvore, and Flurry, and managing a group of greater than 850 individuals.
In 2017, Tully joined information analytics firm Splunk as its chief know-how officer and senior vice chairman of product and engineering and managed the corporate’s migration to the cloud. Whereas he cherished his group at Splunk, Tully mentioned that he was all the time within the investing aspect of the tech world, and his curiosity was additional piqued by his spouse, Jess Lee, who has been a companion at Sequoia since 2016.
“Rising up within the Valley, I had this behind my thoughts, and I assumed that as a technical individual, I may do the job in another way, so I started to take some calls,” he mentioned.
A type of calls ultimately become a job provide at Menlo Ventures, and Tully joined the agency as a companion in 2021.
“This was a possibility to be a part of the subsequent wave of oldsters that joined the agency, which was thrilling to me as a result of I am a builder,” he mentioned.
At Menlo Ventures, Tully writes checks for AI startups on the app and infrastructure layers
Since becoming a member of Menlo, Tully has invested in 9 startups, together with Pinecone, which raised a $28 million Sequence A in 2022; Neon, which raised a $46 million Sequence B in 2023; Unstructured, which raised a $40 million Sequence B in 2024; and JuliaHub, an AI programming startup that raised $24 million in 2021.
One other of his portfolio corporations, AI high quality administration software program startup True Period, was acquired by Snowflake earlier this yr.
For Tully, discovering camaraderie with technical founders has been a profitable technique thus far in his VC profession.
“My background helps me join with technical founders as a result of they need traders who they’ll discuss store with,” he mentioned. “I’ve managed groups and have been CTO of a public firm.”
He is additionally written code as a method to assist win over startups within the broader Menlo Ventures portfolio. In 2022, one other Menlo companion, Naomi Pilosof Ionita, was working to land a deal for fintech startup Orb. The corporate did not have a software program growth equipment, so Tully wrote them one, printed out a hyperlink to the devkit, rolled it right into a scroll, and delivered it to the startup. That helped seal the deal, and Ionita led Orb’s $14 million Sequence A funding spherical.
Whereas Menlo has been bolstering its portfolio with AI infrastructure startups, Tully mentioned he is excited nowadays about alternatives on the software layer. On one hand, this implies taking a look at varied vertical AI classes, together with legaltech – he wrote a $14 million seed test for AI authorized assistant Eve in 2021 – in addition to advertising and marketing and automation.
And, maybe unsurprisingly, Tully can be attempting out varied AI coding copilots, and he says that the tech is making him “50-60% extra productive if I am being trustworthy.”
“I am actually excessive on AI coding assistants,” he mentioned. “Alternatives on this area are fairly compelling.”
