I live in San Francisco and can be reached at t@toni.org.
I’m a happy dad of three grown kids and partner to Kim D’Arcy. My late friend Om once summed me up as “someone who loves life and living,” which sounds good to me!
In my career, I started out writing software and moved into building and leading companies as a CEO and co-founder. For the past decade I have been a partner at True Ventures, investing in seed-stage startups, and most recently I joined Bluesky as their CEO.
Bluesky’s mission is to develop and drive large-scale adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation. Our main vehicles for accomplishing this mission are the Bluesky app that is used by tens of millions of people, and the AT Protocol that underpins our app and is seeing rapid adoption by hundreds of other social apps that together form the Atmosphere, an open ecosystem of social spaces connected by a single account.
At True, we work collaboratively on all investments. Some of the ones I currently focus on most closely:
- AlpineAI – Private, secure AI
- Bigscreen – VR done right
- Carbo Culture – Biocarbon climate solutions
- Exnaton – Energy sharing communities
- Handshake – Early career network
- Hatch – Sleep companion technology
- Intropic – Biodegradable plastics
- Lemony – On-premise AI
- Nixtla – Forecasting & anomaly detection
- Sandbar – A new human-computer interface
I also contribute actively at Automattic, the open source company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce. I was Automattic’s founding CEO and continue to support internal projects and investments as a board member and special advisor.
Career Highlights:
- Operated a top 10 global website
- Helped start a leading Silicon Valley VC firm
- Led a startup acquired by Yahoo!
- Voted Silicon Valley’s best startup CEO
- Launched the Yahoo! Developer Network
- Developed 3D audio software for NASA
Experience:
- True Ventures (2005–Present): Partner at a firm supporting early-stage tech entrepreneurs. Portfolio highlights include Fitbit, Peloton, Ring.com, Automattic, Duo, Handshake and HashiCorp.
- Automattic (2006–2014): Founding CEO of the remote work pioneer behind WordPress.com, reaching nearly a billion people.
- Yahoo! (2004–2006): VP, Yahoo! Developer Network. Integrated Oddpost’s tech into Yahoo! Mail and launched YDN.
- Oddpost (2002–2004): CEO. Created a webmail service that influenced modern web apps. Acquired by Yahoo!.
- Uplister (2000–2002): Co-founder & CEO. Built a music discovery platform with 500k users and celebrity contributors.
- Aureal Semiconductor (1996–2000): VP Technology. Developed 3D audio chips adopted by major PC brands and game developers. Acquired by Creative Labs.
- Crystal River Engineering (1993–1996): Software Engineer. Advanced NASA-commissioned 3D audio tech for VR and simulations. Acquired by Aureal.
Education:
- BS in Computer Science from Stanford University (transferred from Santa Barbara City College).
I grew up in Switzerland by Lake Zurich, DJed at Radio Zuerisee, and served in the Swiss military before moving to California.