Investing

I’m an occasional angel investor. I write a small number of small checks into early-stage companies, usually technical founders building with AI, and I try to be more useful with my time than with my money.

Most of my energy goes into Complyance, where I’m CPTO. That keeps my investing selective: I made no new investments in 2025 while we were raising our Series A, and in 2026 I’m open again to a few founders a year.

What I’m looking for

I invest where I can bring real experience, not just capital:

• AI agents and the infrastructure around them. Agent runtimes, evaluation, observability, security and identity for agents. The unglamorous layer that decides whether agents can be trusted with real work.
• AI in high-stakes, regulated work. Compliance, risk, security, fintech and health, where being wrong is expensive and trust is the product.
• Tools that change how software gets built. Especially for small teams doing the work that used to take large ones.

I don’t invest in companies that compete with Complyance.

How I can help

• Agent architecture and security. I’ve built agent infrastructure that runs inside enterprise customers’ environments, and I’m happy to review yours: sandboxing, credentials, evals, failure modes.
• From day one to Series A. I joined Complyance as CTO and its first employee, and built the product, engineering and design organisation through a Series A led by GV.
• Selling to security-conscious enterprises. Security reviews, questionnaires, and earning the trust of buyers who say no for a living.
• Building from zero, more than once. I co-founded a startup that was acquired, and built 8+ ventures as a venture CTO at BCG Digital Ventures.

Portfolio

• MoMo Coffee (2024). A technology-enabled coffee chain rethinking how coffee shops operate, for customers and baristas alike.
• Stealth (2024). Project management software built around how engineering teams actually work.

Pitching me

Email hello@hugo.im with the subject “Founder: your company name”. A short note works best: what you’re building and for whom, why now, what’s working so far, and the round you’re raising. A deck is welcome but optional.

I read every email and reply to every founder, usually within a week.