Prolific fintech investor and QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman said Friday that he will transition to a partner emeritus role by year’s end to focus on founding his own startups.
But those startups won’t necessarily be financial technology companies. In a post on X, Rotman — who helped start QED in 2007 — declared that “the first business” that he plans “on getting out of the ground is in the music industry.”
He wrote: “It’s easy to call me crazy for all the obvious reasons, but it’s worth reserving judgment until you learn more about the business that’s evolved in my head and sat on the shelf for years. It will be fun to build and could actually make a huge difference to an industry that none of us could imagine living without.”
Rotman started Alexandria, Virginia-based QED, which today has $4 billion in assets under management, nearly two decades ago with Nigel Morris and Caribou Honig. He led the firm’s investment in Credit Karma and played a role in QED’s investments in unicorns such as GreenSky, Flywire, and SoFi. (In fact, QED was the first institutional money into Credit Karma.) Other companies that the firm has backed include Creditas, Nubank, AvidXchange, and Bitso.
QED exclusively invests in companies building financial technology at the pre-seed to Series A stages.
Rotman, who goes by the handle “The Fintech Junkie” on X, said he will transition to his new role on January 1, 2026. He will continue to serve in a part-time advisory role to QED over the coming years.
Besides founding music startups, Rotman said he likely plans to write a book centered around his “observations and frameworks for the startup and VC worlds.”
He wrote in the X post: “This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me – writing is my oxygen. I can’t imagine a life without it even though ChatGPT and Claude are better writers than I am.”
In a statement, QED Managing Partner Nigel Morris noted that he and Rotman had worked together for over 30 years — previously also at Capital One.
“Frank, at his core, is an entrepreneur and I have no doubt he will excel in his next chapter,” he said.
QED Investors’ partner Amias Gerety will be promoted to lead QED’s U.S. investment team.
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Silicon Valley used to take a backseat to Washington, D.C. But now, the people disrupting technology have taken the wheel at the highest echelons of government. And that’s thanks, in large part, to the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE.
Much reporting on DOGE has focused on its staffers’ ties to Musk, the billionaire bestie of President Donald Trump. However, there’s another major nexus: the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors who have joined its clarion call of slashing government spending.
TechCrunch has compiled a comprehensive list of the founders and VCs who have worked with DOGE, identified through a combination of personal declarations, court records, and other reporting. Our research also reveals one previously unreported DOGE member, Mike Gonzalez, the former founder of an HR startup called TraceHQ.
And Gonzalez is far from the only Silicon Valley founder to find a new role in public service. Our roster of founders-turned-DOGE workers spans from the co-founder of Airbnb to a guy who sold his startup for nearly $1 billion — only to join DOGE to find a higher meaning after breaking up with his girlfriend.
Then there are the VCs. This contingent includes Silicon Valley titan Marc Andreessen — a self-described “unpaid intern” at DOGE — and one man who spent seven years working for Thiel Capital before joining the top levels of government.
Regardless of how you feel about DOGE, there’s no question that Silicon Valley’s influence on the federal government is stronger than ever. To find out who is shaping that future, read on.
Cavanaugh is the co-founder of two startups: Brainbase, an enterprise SaaS business which he sold in 2022, and FlowFi, which raised $9 million last year to build a marketplace of finance experts for entrepreneurs.
He is part of a DOGE team tasked with auditing — some would say dismantling — the USADF and IAF, two U.S. government agencies that fund development projects in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, according to a lawsuit from USADF president Ward Brehm.
Although Cavanaugh has no public history of political activities, he looks to Trump backer Peter Thiel for “a lot” of his thinking about the world and business, he said in an interview with VC firm Differential Ventures.
Ehikian has sold two companies to Salesforce: Airkit.ai in 2023 and RelateIQ in 2014. Ehikian worked in product at Salesforce twice after the acquisition of his companies, most recently serving as VP of AI products.
Trump appointed Ehikian as acting administrator and deputy administrator of GSA in January. This agency is the cornerstone of purchasing contracts for the federal government.
In his role, Ehikian manages GSA’s real estate portfolio and doles out government contracts for technology. He has said that the GSA would terminate leases and cut consulting contracts, and has been firing GSA employees.
California Senator Alex Padilla and New York Congressman Joseph Morelle wrote a letter in March to Ehikian, opposing his work with DOGE on such matters.
Fulcher is the founder of RingMD, a Singapore-based telehealth startup. Fulcher made headlines in 2013 after the government of Singapore funded RingMD with $500,000 when he was only 21.
Despite expanding to multiple countries in Asia, RingMD has since gone bankrupt, according to Forbes.
Fulcher, now 32, was installed by DOGE to oversee reforms at the Veterans Administration (VA), which cut 1,000 staff soon after DOGE’s arrival.
Gebbia is the billionaire co-founder of Airbnb and Samara, a pre-fab tiny home startup that raised $41 million in 2023. He is also a personal friend of Elon Musk, who had been deliberating buying one of Samara’s tiny homes last year, according to Tesla filings.
At DOGE, Gebbia will work as a volunteer in the Office of Personnel Management, he confirmed in a post on X after his involvement was reported by The New York Times. “My first project at DOGE is improving the slow and paper-based retirement process,” Gebbia wrote.
Gebbia is a longtime Democratic donor, but said he voted for Trump in 2024 and supports Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new health secretary.
Gonzalez founded HR startup TraceHQ in 2019 and sold it to Paylocity in 2023 for an undisclosed sum. Gonzalez says on his website that he started his career as a Facebook product manager and worked at Zenefits with David Sacks when he was CEO there, all before launching his own company.
VC Sacks has joined the Trump administration as its crypto and AI czar. Gonzalez was working on the finance team when they worked together at Zenefits.
Gonzalez’s LinkedIn profile previously mentioned that he joined DOGE full-time earlier this month as a “Senior Advisor” at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Shortly after TechCrunch reached out to Gonzalez for comment, the mention of DOGE was removed from his LinkedIn profile.
Gonzalez has not said what he’s doing at OPM. But in February he wrote a post on LinkedIn lamenting the state and process of the federal budget.
Hiremath is the co-founder of video recording startup Loom, which was sold to Atlassian in 2023 for $975 million.
According to a blog post on his personal website titled “I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life,” Hiremath says that after breaking up with his girlfriend, he decided to “externalize” his emotions by climbing a mountain in the Himalayas. After that, he decided to work for DOGE.
His stint at DOGE lasted about a month and involved making hundreds of recruiting calls. Hiremath wrote that he was added to Signal groups run by DOGE and “immediately put to work.”
Hiremath praised DOGE’s work as “extremely important,” but said he quit the job as he needed to focus on himself. He called off plans to move to Washington, D.C. and went to Hawaii instead, his post states.
Morgan is the co-founder and former CEO of an Austin-based edtech startup called Podium Education, a press release from last year shows, although he is not currently listed as a leader on the company’s website.
His social media presence is extremely minimal but he has reportedly been involved in edtech for well over a decade, previously working for a long-since acquired company that offered a Facebook app for schools.
Morgan is said to be involved in DOGE’s efforts at the Education Department, especially around efforts to augment — perhaps replace — some of the workers there with AI, The New York Times reports.
Schutt is listed by Crunchbase as a co-founder of a Virginia-based software company called KAMM, which state records say has been inactive as of late November 2024.
Schutt has also worked on WinRed, WIRED reports, a for-profit fundraising site that says it’s helped raise $1.8 billion for Republican party candidates since 2023. He also served as the CTO at online fundraising platform REVV, also used by the Republican party.
He is a member of DOGE and is now on staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to an internal staff directory viewed by Politico. He was previously at the GSA. He is said to have access to FEMA systems and to have worked for a company called Outburst Data which hosts several Musk-related sites, and hosts parts of the DOGE website.
Shaotran was previously the founder of Energize.ai, though its website no longer loads. He also developed several iPhone apps, including a Donald Trump-themed running game called “Donald Dash.”
In 2024, Shaotran told Business Insider that he was a 22-year-old Harvard computer science student working solo on his startup, which offered an AI scheduling assistant and had landed a $100,000 grant from OpenAI.
Shaotran was one of a number of DOGE workers named in a lawsuit by federal employees that sought to prevent DOGE workers from accessing federal records, although he was not a defendant.
Shaotran reportedly has a working GSA email address and requested access to a decade’s worth of GSA data. Shaotran also has access to email systems at the Department of Education and access to the department’s back-end website, NBC reported.
Smith is a longtime healthcare entrepreneur who co-founded the palliative care company Aspire Health (later acquired by Anthem) and co-founded CareBridge, which provides at-home service to Medicaid patients (and is said to have struck a deal with Elevance Health to sell for $2.7 billion).
He also co-founded healthcare VC firm Russell Street Ventures and served as CEO of Main Street Health, which offers primary care services to those in rural areas.
Smith led the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation during President Trump’s first term. He is said to be one of the leaders of DOGE, alongside close Musk ally Steve Davis.
As ABC News reported, Smith has been an advocate for privatizing aspects of Medicaid and Medicare. At DOGE, Smith has requested access to the payment systems at Medicare, according to The New York Times.
Wick is the co-founder of Y Combinator startup Intercept. He also worked as an engineer at Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo, he told a podcast in 2024.
He is among the DOGE staffers granted extensive access to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s data, according to a lawsuit from former USAID contractors which names him (but not as a defendant).
Wick graduated from MIT with a degree in computer science in 2019 and also has a master’s degree from there, according to an archived version of his website. He also worked at YC-backed logistics startup Flexport.
Akis is a co-founder and president of Silicon Valley VC firm Human Capital.
He reportedly led inquiries into the Treasury Department’s payments systems, The New York Times reported. He was also named in a lawsuit about DOGE’s legality, although not as a defendant.
Akis is the second link to DOGE from Human Capital. The VC firm’s former head of talent, Amanda Scales, is now chief of staff at the powerful Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s HR department.
Andreessen is the co-founder of prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. He famously backed Trump for president in 2024, despite previously endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Andreessen described himself as an “unpaid intern” for DOGE in a podcast with the Hoover Institution earlier this year, reportedly helping recruit for DOGE’s early hires, the FT reported.
In the Hoover Institution podcast, Andreessen described former a16z managing partner Scott Kupor — and incoming OPM head — as “very aligned” with DOGE’s mission.
Gracias is the founder and CEO of Valor Equity Partners, and a longtime close associate of Elon Musk. Valor has invested in a who’s who of buzzy startups (including Anduril, Dataminr, Eight Sleep, and Reddit) but is particularly known for backing Musk companies like SpaceX, Neuralink, SolarCity, The Boring Company, and Tesla.
Gracias is well known as a Tesla board member from 2007 to 2021, on the board prior to its IPO as well as when Tesla bought the Musk-controlled company SolarCity for $2.6 billion.
On a February episode of the VC All-In Podcast, Gracias said that he was working with DOGE. “I’m not there full-time,” he said. “I’m in and out a little bit and trying to help where I can.” He also mentioned that DOGE had 80-plus full-time people at that time.
He is apparently now working with DOGE’s efforts at the Social Security Administration, The New York Times reported, and is one of nine DOGE associates there. Other Valor employees are also part of the Social Security crew, the NYT reports.
Until recently, Michael Kratsios served as managing director at Scale AI, the data labeling startup that began working with the Pentagon last year to test and evaluate AI tools for the military.
From 2010 to 2017, Kratsios worked for Thiel Capital, the office that manages VC Peter Thiel’s many investments, per his LinkedIn; Thiel was one of Trump’s early backers in 2016. Kratsios also served as CTO of the U.S. during Trump’s first administration.
Kratsios helped lead efforts to staff DOGE in late 2024 by conducting interviews of prospective staff, Bloomberg reported.
He is Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy. During his confirmation hearing, Kratsios responded to questions about mass firings of federal workers by saying he believes it’s reasonable for the current administration to evaluate current talent.
Kupor is a managing partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and was a16z’s first employee. He serves on the boards of a number of a16z investments. He is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association — the VC industry’s lobbying organization.
Trump announced in December 2024 that he picked Kupor to serve as the director of the Office of Personnel Management. The same day, Kupor confirmed that he was helping DOGE.
As the federal government’s HR department, the OPM has become ground zero for DOGE’s mission to slash the federal workforce. DOGE workers are using OPM’s data and computer systems to obtain information about federal workers across agencies, according to a CNN report.
Maguire is a partner at Sequoia Capital and formerly co-founded cyber firm Expanse, which was sold to Palo Alto Networks for $800 million in 2020.
Maguire has reportedly helped screen potential candidates for DOGE. He’s a frequent and vocal supporter of DOGE on X.
Maguire is an outspoken supporter of President Trump, and announced that he donated $300,000 to his campaign last summer.
Ramada was previously a managing director at SpringTide Capital, where he was part of a $12 million deal to fund the probiotic drink company ZBiotics. His firm also invested in a SpaceX supplier last year.
He was identified as a member of DOGE in a temporary restraining order after the American Federation of Teachers sought to block DOGE’s access to privileged information. The restraining order was later denied by a federal judge.
In a signed declaration, Ramada said he started working for DOGE in January, assigned to audit contracts and programs at the Department of Education for waste, such as federal student loans. President Trump, a critic of the Department of Education, recently signed an executive order to start its closure very soon.
In another declaration, Ramada, who is also listed as a GSA employee, said he was assigned to the Labor Department, too, to “improve its information technology and data organization system.”
Scales worked for two and half years at Silicon Valley VC firm Human Capital, advising the firm’s portfolio companies on talent and HR, according to her her LinkedIn profile. Her boss at Human Capital, its co-founder Baris Akis, served as a DOGE advisor.
Scales is now chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s powerful human resources department, according to an OPM memo.
Scales previously worked on talent at Uber before joining Human Capital, according to her LinkedIn.
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Bradley Tusk, co-founder and managing partner at Tusk Venture Partners, told TechCrunch in today’s episode of Equity that VC as we know it is dead. And it has been for the last four years.
“Maybe there’s some VC that I’ve never heard of that’s awash with liquidity the last couple of years, but we haven’t returned $1 in capital to our LPs in four years,” Tusk said.
VC has had a rough couple of years thanks to higher interest rates, crashed startup valuations from 2021 highs, and stymied IPO and M&A transactions.
Many investors had been holding their breath for President Donald Trump to rejuvenate the VC landscape with deregulatory measures and pro-business tax reforms. However, the uncertainty following Trump’s record-breaking executive orders, tariff-fueled trade wars, and the dismantling of federal agencies has tempered the anticipated surge in VC activity.
Or as Tusk put it, “I just don’t know many serious economists that think a trade war is a good idea for anyone’s economy.”
So Tusk is bowing out of the traditional VC model and has decided not to raise a fourth fund. Instead, he is shifting focus to an “equity-for-services” model, which allows Tusk to accept equity in exchange for helping startups navigate regulatory environments, legislative communications, and government procurement.
For Tusk, equity-for-services goes back to his roots. In 2010, when he had just launched his political consulting firm Tusk Strategies, what was then a small transportation technology company called Uber enlisted his services. Uber didn’t have the cash to pay him, so they offered him equity. Tusk spent the next few years “running campaigns all over the U.S. to legalize Uber and ride-sharing.”
Creating regulatory frameworks for disruptive technologies to save startups from death by politics has been Tusk’s bread and butter for years, an expertise he earned through previous roles as campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral race and deputy governor of Illinois.
All the “real VC stuff,” like fundraising from LPs and “compliance, board seats, portfolio construction,” just started to feel like a distraction from the kind of work he actually loves doing.
And it feels like a shortcut to do the work he loves, while still actually making more money than he can make as a classic venture investor.
“When I realized that I could just as easily get on cap tables and get equity from startups that I like in return for my expertise, the traditional model just didn’t make a lot of sense,” Tusk said.
“I actually made more money when I was in equity-for-services because even though there’s less leverage than there is on a venture check, you keep 100% of the proceeds,” he said. “Whereas in traditional venture, I’ve got to return the investment capital to investors. I’ve got to repay the fees, then I’ve got to give them 80 cents on the dollar,” he said.
Tusk Venture Partners will continue to support its existing portfolio companies until the fund’s life cycle ends in 2031.
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