Announcing the M12 Advisory Board

At M12, our goal is to identify visionary founders developing the next generation of technological shifts in the enterprise. Our team boasts decades of experience in R&D, product innovation, business development, and entrepreneurship; but the accelerating pace of innovation has motivated us to forge connections with industry-leading experts to more broadly forecast what’s on the horizon. Today, we’re formalizing that counsel as the M12 Advisory Board.

We selected the individuals to comprise this board with three factors in mind:

1. The anticipated market opportunity of their respective areas of expertise

2. The authority and heralded reputation of each expert

3. The challenges that our portfolio companies face, and where we as a team have knowledge gaps

Many of these experts have been important mentors to M12 and our portfolio in the past, helping us understand what we don’t know — what the next generation of disruption might look like, and how to best prepare for it. They’re the authorities that we tap for guidance around technology trends, customer perceptions, tactical possibilities, and the evolving role of a company. We want to cultivate the M12 portfolio with an eye toward the future — anticipating technology advances, market movements, and talent needs that might make or break an early-stage company. I’m thrilled to introduce you to our inaugural M12 Advisory Board members:

Dr. Matthias Troyer is a global leader in the field of quantum computing and the simulation of quantum materials. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Vice President of the Aspen Center for Physics, a recipient of the Rahman Prize for Computational Physics of the American Physical Society “for pioneering numerical work in many seemingly intractable areas of quantum physics”, and a recipient of the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics. At Microsoft, Matthias is driving the development of applications for quantum computers and is one of the core research leaders focused on the hybrid quantum-classical architecture of Microsoft’s quantum computing system.

Saurabh Tiwary is Vice President & Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. He leads Project Turing which is a deep learning initiative at Microsoft that he founded in 2015 from scratch (literally setting up the first significant batch of GPUs) to building some of the largest language models in the world. Deep learning models from his team are today serving 100s of millions of users.

Jocelyn Moore is the Global Practice Leader for Microsoft’s Diversity & Inclusion organization, leading all D&I efforts for the company’s Go-to-Market groups. She brings 20 years of progressive Human Resources experience across many industries to her role.

Ann Johnson oversees the long-term investment and partnership strategies for security, compliance, and identity for Microsoft. She has become a recognized thought leader on cybersecurity and a sought-after global speaker and digital author specializing in cyber resilience, online fraud, cyberattacks, compliance and emerging security.

Jason Warner oversees the GitHub Office of the CTO, whose mission is to explore the unknown and non-existent aspects of technology and software in order to build a map of the product’s future. Jason has played an integral role in scaling the GitHub Engineering, Product, and Security Teams, and building a product roadmap to fit the needs of developers around the world.

As a financially focused fund, M12 invests independently of Microsoft’s ambitions. Committed to founder-friendly principles, we’ve always looked for ways to leverage the Microsoft platform to fuel portfolio company success instead of the other way around. The formation of our Advisory Board marks a new way that we can provide value as a fund: tapping best-in-class industry experts from Microsoft to help inform our investment focus and to advise our portfolio companies.

Looking so far into the future, we’ll rely on this network of trusted advisors to provide validated and nuanced opinions on market and technical opportunities. We’re proud to invite this established group of world-renowned authorities into our extended M12 family — to tap into their expertise, learn about startups on their radar, and share their counsel with our portfolio companies. And of course, as new trends emerge and startups are faced with new challenges, we look forward to evolving the M12 Advisory board, adding new competencies to guide our vanguard bets.