Hey, I'm Luke! πŸ‘‹

Hey! Glad to have taken you away from Insta for a couple minutes.

The cliffnotes are I'm from n. Minnesota, studied Sociology / CS at Harvard, dropped out for 4 years as a 22 year old doing YC. Made 20k a year for three years sleeping in a bunkbed with my cofounder. Got lucky in social consumer. Sold my company that piggybacked off a new app that started in China called TikTok.

Moved to Mexico, learned Spanish, volunteered as a sailing instructor at Community Boating in Boston, finished my degree. Joined MSFT to commercialize DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and then was part of the founding team of MSFT Copilot.

Luke at a wedding in Estado de Mexico

I called the Uber to the wrong church while at a wedding in Edomex πŸ˜‚

Petra, Jordan Harvard Yard

Some days you ride the camel. Some days you're tossed by the bull.

Some other stories in there: running 180 miles to Canada, winning Forbes 30u30, moving to SΓ£o Paulo and learning Portuguese, winning (and sadly not being able to do bcuz startups) the Schwarzman scholarship, working in Jordan, running an edtech nonprofit for 10 years, and starting the biggest college couch surfing website in the world. Got my start creating the biggest high school ultimate frisbee tournament in the Midwest. Almost ran Gen Z Product at Clubhouse. Now running the biggest hackathon in Minnesota.

Harvard University Sociology & CSY Combinator W18Schwarzman Scholar Tsinghua (declined 😒)SwipeHouse Founded & ExitedMicrosoft Sr. PM, CopilotFair Opportunity Project Co-Founder & BoardPioneer Fund LP & Venture PartnerForbes 30 Under 30HBS Field X/Y Mentor

As seen in

Forbes New York Times CNN CNBC TechCrunch

Super Bowl Appearances

While I still lack 100 pounds from the bench press to be qualified, at least the products are making appearances! Scaled DALL-E image generation from 0 to 100M MAU at Microsoft. Promoted within 6 months. Hired as a VP exception during a company-wide freeze.

Luke at Microsoft

At the mothership in Redmond, WA

With Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

Years before with MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer. Was I demoted?


Featured

Adventures building 50+ products → Consumer, fintech, SaaS, climate, and more β€” many while living in a bunkbed with my cofounder
Summer Playbook KickBack TikTok.WTF BeatSpend Freightjay Code-Star Truewrite Quartz Friend Flights Checklist Keystroke BoostPad

Research & Patents

Former research assistant to MacArthur Genius Winner Prof. Matthew Desmond at Harvard. Published in Stanford and New America journals.

US Patent 10,452,688

US Patent 10,452,688

AI-powered crowdsourced image identification at eBay. Cited by eBay, Snap, Thinkspan, and Festo. Filed across the US, China, Korea, Japan, and Europe.

Global VC Flows visualization

Global VC Flow Analysis

Mapped $310B+ in cross-border venture capital investment across 190 countries. Reached 2M+ readers.

2 Patents
4 Cited By
5 Countries Filed
1 Patent Pending (Microsoft)
See all research →

Books


Recent Speeches

Presenting generative AI models in Spanish in Mexico City

Presenting generative AI models in Spanish β€” CDMX

Presenting remotely to Mackenzie University in SΓ£o Paulo

Presenting remotely to Mackenzie University β€” SΓ£o Paulo

Mackenzie University SΓ£o Paulo audience

Mackenzie University SΓ£o Paulo audience

Chilling at YC Alumni Day

Chilling at YC Alumni Day


What I Invest In

LP and Venture Partner at Pioneer Fund (fund behind Brex, Vanta, Snackpass, Boom). Personally investing in healthcare, robotics, compliance, and products that solve real pain points. Shoot me a message on LinkedIn if you're raising.


Advising & Board Work

I work with seed-stage founders as an advisor and board member. I'm also a mentor at HBS Field X/Y. If you're looking for someone to join your board or advise your team, reach out β€” I'd love to chat. Learn more →

An extremely knowledgeable consultant who thinks outside the box. He's a fast learner so you don't waste any time having him come up to speed on your products or situation. He's effective at thinking about the near term and long term problems β€” and will give great advice on each.

β€” Startup Founder

By far one of our most helpful conversations. Luke created an environment in which we could be honest about our challenges. He helped us think outside the box on our model and distribution strategy and land on tactical next steps.

β€” Founding Team

Luke provided incredible feedback and was very generous with his time. I appreciated how he was very direct β€” it's very hard to get unfiltered and constructive feedback as a founder.

β€” Startup Founder

A great person to run your ideas and thoughts by. Being a successful founder, he can save weeks if not months of trying things out and give you advice on what will and won't work.

β€” Startup Founder

Engaging with Luke was an exceptional experience. He combined deep knowledge with genuine warmth. His insights into different strategies and his rationale for recommending a specific path were incredibly valuable β€” bringing clarity to my plans.

β€” Startup Founder

His experience was insightful and a big help in evaluating and adjusting our game plan. The conversation inspired us to commit more time to business functions and fortify our weak areas.

β€” Founding Team

Hugely insightful with the growth phase of a company β€” as he has been there before.

β€” Startup Founder

Luke gave practical advice on how I can test my business idea and what metrics I should focus on. I learned so much from his successful entrepreneurship journey.

β€” Startup Founder


Say Hello

If you're building something early-stage and want to talk, I'd enjoy hearing from you.