# Jesse Robbins

> Jesse Robbins is General Partner at Heavybit, the San Francisco-based venture firm focused exclusively on developer-first companies. He co-founded Chef (sold to Progress Software for $200M+), invented GameDay chaos engineering at Amazon where he held the title 'Master of Disaster', and co-created the O'Reilly Velocity Conference that seeded the global DevOps movement. A former volunteer firefighter and EMT, he brings a crisis-responder's instincts to early-stage investing, backing companies like Snyk, PagerDuty, Fastly, LaunchDarkly, and Tailscale. His portfolio spans 60+ companies with five IPOs.

- **Role:** General Partner at Heavybit
- **Organizations:** Heavybit, Orion Labs, Chef (Opscode), Amazon Web Services, O'Reilly Velocity Conference
- **From:** Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Certified Firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician, Firefighter/EMT Training
- **Known for:** Invented 'GameDay' chaos engineering practice at Amazon (2003), later adopted by Google, Netflix (Chaos Monkey), Yahoo, Facebook, Co-founded Chef/Opscode - infrastructure automation platform used by Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft with hundreds of thousands of developers, Co-created O'Reilly Velocity Conference that seeded the global DevOps movement

## Career timeline

- **pre-2001** — Served as volunteer firefighter and EMT; received formal emergency management training
- **2001** — Joined Amazon as Website Availability Manager; earned the title 'Master of Disaster'
- **2003** — Invented 'GameDay' at Amazon - deliberate chaos engineering exercises to test infrastructure resilience
- **2007** — Co-founded O'Reilly Velocity Conference with Tim O'Reilly, which became the epicenter of the DevOps movement
- **2008** — Left Amazon; co-founded Opscode (later renamed Chef) with Barry Steinglass, Nathen Haneysmith, and Joshua Timberman
- **2009** — Launched Chef open-source infrastructure automation framework; raised $2.5M Series A led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson
- **2010** — Raised $11M Series B from Battery Ventures; named to Business Journal 40 Under 40
- **2011** — Received MIT Technology Review TR35 'Innovators Under 35' award
- **2012** — Recognized as TechTarget Top 10 Cloud Computing Leader; transitioned to Chief Community Officer at Chef
- **2014** — Co-founded Orion Labs (voice communication platform for teams); joined Heavybit as part-time General Partner
- **2020** — Chef acquired by Progress Software for $200M+
- **2021** — Named to The Seed 100 list of best early-stage investors
- **2022** — Joined Heavybit as full-time General Partner

## Achievements

- Invented 'GameDay' chaos engineering practice at Amazon (2003), later adopted by Google, Netflix (Chaos Monkey), Yahoo, Facebook
- Co-founded Chef/Opscode - infrastructure automation platform used by Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft with hundreds of thousands of developers
- Co-created O'Reilly Velocity Conference that seeded the global DevOps movement
- MIT Technology Review TR35 'Innovators Under 35' (2011)
- Business Journal 40 Under 40 (2010)
- TechTarget Top 10 Cloud Computing Leader (2012)
- The Seed 100 best early-stage investors (2021)
- 5 portfolio company IPOs: PagerDuty, Instacart, Fastly, Caribou Biosciences, Zymergen
- 14+ portfolio companies with $500M+ valuations including Snyk, Tailscale, LaunchDarkly
- Deployed during Hurricane Katrina disaster response operations
- Collaborated on crisis tech innovations adopted by the United Nations

## Latest updates

- **2022-09** — Heavybit closed a new fund with $80M in capital; Robbins transitioned to full-time General Partner
- **2024-01** — Active on investment thesis around AI developer tools, emphasizing genuine integration over surface-level AI features
- **2025-01** — Continues to lead investments at Heavybit in cloud-native security, developer APIs, and infrastructure tooling

## Links

- Website: https://jesserobbins.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesserobbins
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/jesserobbins
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heavybitindustries

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/jesse-robbins
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-18