Engineer leaders investing in early stage founders building
picks and shovels
for developers

Irregular Expressions, IrregEx for short, is a group of seasoned software engineering and product leaders investing in and advising early stage technology startups.

We’ve spent many cumulative decades bringing high-growth consumer and enterprise products to market, and are driven to help founders scale their own teams, products and businesses faster, by leveraging both our know-how and our network.

Having co-founded, built and scaled hundreds of companies, primarily in the San Francisco, New York, and now remote-first ecosystems, we love working closely with the founders and teams we back, and think through thorny challenges on the product, engineering, and business fronts alike.

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TEAM Spotlight

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Zach Abrams

Co-Founder @Bridge, CPO @Brex, Director Product Management @Coinbase, @Remind, Lead Product Manager @Square

Varun Srinivasan

Co-Founder @Farcaster, Senior Director of Platform @Coinbase, Product Management @Microsoft

Tejpaul Bhatia

CRO @Axiom Space, Executive Engagement & Thought Leadership @Google, COO @Explain Everything

Swaroop Butala

Director of Engineering @Box, Co-Founder @Stealth

Supreet Oberoi

SVP of Engineering @BriteCore, SVP of Engineering @Demandbase, VP IoT & Big Data Applications @Oracle

Sheba Rasson

Global Product Lead @Google, CX Strategy Manager @The New York Times

Sameer Jain

CIO @Nomura, Co-Founder & CTO @USREM, CTO @Barclays

Robyn Peterson

SVP of Advertising Technology & Technical Advisor @Warner Bros. Discovery, CTO @CNN, CTO @Mashable

Mike Reust

President @Betterment

Mackenzie Kosut

Startup Leader @Microsoft, earlier @AWS, @Oscar Health

Liz Maida

Co-Founder & CEO @Fathom, Co-Founder & CEO @Uplevel Security, Senior Director Product Development @Akamai Technologies

Leonid Igolnik

EVP of Engineering @Clari, General Partner @IA Seed Ventures

Joel Witten

Head of Data @Rec Room, Data Science Manager @Facebook, Head of Data Engineering & Analytics @Venmo, Data Engineering @SquareSpace

Irina Krechmer

CTO @Blue Apron, VP Engineering @XO Group, Executive Director of Engineering @Amplify

Gil Shklarski

CTO @Thirty Madison, General Partner @Operator Partners, CTO @Flatiron Health, Startup Mentor @First Round Capital, Software Engineer @Facebook, @Microsoft, R&D manager @IDF

Carter Perez

CEO @SaaSy Sales Leadership, Co-Founder & CEO @Revenue Chemists, Head Coach @ScaleWise

Camille Fournier

Head of Engineering & Architecture @JPMorgan Chase, Head of Platform Engineering @Two Sigma, CTO @Rent The Runway

Ben Birnbaum

Co-Founder, President, and CTO @Inductive Bio, Senior Engineering Director @Flatiron Health, Senior Software Engineer @Google

Ashley Miller

VP of Application Infrastucture @Datadog, Senior Software Engineering Manager @BuzzFeed & @Birchbox

Andrey Akselrod

Co-Founder @Stealth, CTO @People.ai, Founder & CTO @Smartling

Alexis Lê-Quôc

Co-Founder & CTO @Datadog, Director of Live Operations @Wireless Generation (now Amplify)

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Meet the team

Portfolio Highlights

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AtomicJar

AtomicJar transforms how teams create software with products that empower developers to iterate faster and ship with confidence, just as infrastructure has taken control away from developers and made it painful to work locally.

Bubble

Bubble is a no-code software development platform that empowers people without programming skills to design, develop, and launch their own applications, tech products, or tools for solving their business problems.

People.ai

People.ai delivers the industry’s leading ROI platform. It transforms business activity data into recommendations that increase the impact of Sales, Marketing, and Operations.

Canva

Canva is a simple-to-use online design and publishing platform that allows everyone to create professional quality designs.

Treasure Data

Treasure Data is a global leader in Customer Data Platforms (CDP) and enterprise data management. Providing the ability to aggregate and translate massive volumes of scattered and siloed data.

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Portfolio

Latest

what founders say about us

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I found Jean to be very thoughtful and structured in the way that he approached his investment decision. He takes the time to make sure that he understands the nuance of your business and to offer valuable perspectives drawn from his past experiences. He is very much a “System 2” thinker, which I greatly appreciate. Post-investment, he has been very proactive in finding ways to support our initiatives -- from making valuable intros to meeting with candidates on our behalf. He's been a great partner to Atomic.
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David
,  
Atomic
Jean was incredibly helpful brokering introductions and investments from stellar engineering experts who could be force multipliers to our business. These experts have been tremendously helpful in my recruiting process as I grow my company post Seed investments. Jean has also made himself available post-investment for any help needed. It's been a great relationship to us and would recommend to founders with a strong focus on capital that is strategic.
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Eli
,  
Nivelo
Jean and Irregular Expressions have been great partners and investors for User Interviews. Even before we were fundraising, Jean was able to give helpful intros and advice on scaling. His experience as an operator allowed him to understand and get up to speed on the market incredibly quickly. Once we began to fundraise they moved fast and had a very smooth, founder friendly process. Everyone in Irregular Expressions is a successful operator, so the questions and conversations felt more like a mentor session than a pitch. Post-investment everyone has been available and engaged whenever I had a request. I’ve done working sessions on GTM strategy and product philosophy with people from Irregular Expressions network. I also have very helpful quarterly meetings with Jean to go over the business. I’m very grateful I’ve had the opportunity to work with Irregular Expressions and look forward to scaling User Interviews with them as partners.
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Basel
,  
User Interviews
If I had one thing to say about Jean, it would be that everything that he does is purposeful and meaningful! Few investors put as much time and effort into understanding our technology, our business model and our challenges; but once Jean decided to make the jump, he was all in and has been one of the most precious allies to Alectio and to me so far. If I need an introduction, he will just make it happen. Jean is one of those people you feel better having by your side, who are there when you need them - whether it's because you need strategic advice, or just because you need a listening ear.
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Jennifer
,  
Alectio
Jean is one of the best technology leaders out there, hands down. I'm very lucky to have him as my investor and mentor.
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Oleg
,  
People.ai
Jean is a super star. Believed in Canva before we even had a prototype and supported us through the fundraising and business building phases. Not to mention, he let us crash at his house for over a month (was supposed to be a couple of days) while we were trying to raise our seed round.
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Cliff
,  
Canva
Jean was one of the first investors we ever pitched and shared the vision for Canva with, back in 2012 when he was on a trip to our home town in Perth, Western Australia. Jean was incredibly supportive back then, and his support has continued over many years - letting us crash at his apartment for *months* as we pitched for our first round of funding, he listened to our unpolished pitch many times, he introduced us to great people in his network, gave great advice and lent a friendly ear too many times to count. We're really lucky to have met Jean along our path.
-  
Melanie
,  
Canva
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