Edison Fund

Edison Fund is a personal, friends-and-family investment fund. I hold a small number of concentrated positions in deep-tech companies led by exceptional founders.

I only invest in what I have high conviction in and given the bar I set, I rarely have the same high conviction in more than three to five companies at a time.

I want to own great companies for as long as they remain great, allowing my investments to compound tax-efficiently and capturing the full growth trajectory of the businesses I own. Trading in and out of positions erodes returns through taxes, transaction costs, and the near-impossibility of timing re-entry correctly. The default is to hold; the burden of proof lies with selling.

I 10x a company's current market cap and imagine I am three years in the future. How realistic does that valuation feel, given the company's revenue growth, profitability trajectory, and TAM expansion? I invest when a 10x return in three years feels plausible. Often, the path to that return runs through a valuation re-rating: the market recognizing a shift in revenue quality, a transition to profitability, or the emergence of a new growth vector that was previously unpriced.

The top 1% of engineers optimize for three things when choosing where to work, in order: equity upside, potential for impact, and opportunity to learn. Where the best engineers concentrate tells me where the best and brightest believe the greatest equity growth lies, where the most value will be created, and where talent density is highest. That talent density also provides meaningful downside protection: companies with exceptional teams become attractive acquisition targets even in adverse scenarios.

I only invest in founder-led companies. I look for the intense, hands-on style exemplified by Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Alex Karp, and Brian Chesky. These leaders are deeply technical, engaging with IC engineers on technical problems and making granular product decisions. A CEO working alongside individual contributors exemplifies the flat organizational structure that allows a company to move at maximum speed. As founders, they carry the authority to make bold, unconventional decisions and the personal incentive to endure through difficulty. The company feels inseparable from the founder. Decisions are made quickly and decisively, not by committee.

Most importantly, they are missionaries. The company is the founder's vehicle to pursue a mission larger than the business itself. Musk aims to make humanity multi-planetary, Luckey to build the arsenal of democracy, Karp to defend western civilization. A grand mission sharpens focus, attracts exceptional talent, and breeds a demanding culture that consistently produces extraordinary results. The result is a lean, talent-dense, mission-driven organization that is the antithesis of bloated bureaucracy. That organizational velocity is itself a durable competitive advantage.

Monopolies make for great investments. Their predictable cash flows command high valuation multiples, and their strong competitive position provides optionality to invest in bets with longer payoff horizons. Google's dominance in search and advertising funds its pursuits in quantum computing, autonomous vehicles, and AI research.

I evaluate monopoly potential with two tests. First: is this company the only one of its kind? There is no other Palantir, no other SpaceX, no other Google, no other Nvidia, no other Amazon. These are category-defining companies that exist in a class of one. Second: could a competitor replicate this company's position, even with unlimited capital? Google has indexed and organized the world's information over two decades. Amazon has built a logistics network that spans the globe. Apple has cultivated an ecosystem of over a billion locked-in users. SpaceX has solved reusable rocketry through thousands of iterative launches. In each case, the technical and operational complexity is so great that capital alone cannot close the gap. I invest in companies that already dominate their niche or have a clear path to doing so.

I only invest in companies whose total addressable markets are growing at 30%+ CAGR over the next decade. In practice, this means the company sits at the epicenter of a secular megatrend like AI, space, or defence, where the market is expanding faster than any single player can capture it. This positioning creates often-undervalued embedded optionality: as adjacent markets emerge, these companies are best placed to capitalize on them, sustaining premium valuations over extended periods.

Predicting the companies that will define the future is easier than predicting the future.