physics-phd
(6)
Daniel Naim
Daniel Naim is the founder and CEO of Fennel, a mobile investing app that hands everyday retail investors the ESG data and shareholder-voting power that big institutions usually keep to themselves. A former dark-matter physicist who grew up in Beirut and earned a physics PhD at UC Davis, Naim left the lab in 2020 - watching California burn and Engine No. 1 win an Exxon board fight - convinced that capital markets, not particle detectors, were the most pressing problem he could work on. Fennel refuses payment for order flow, won't lend out users' shares, became a certified B Corp, and was named one of Fast Company's most innovative companies in personal finance.
Swamy Vijayan
Swamy Vijayan is the CEO and cofounder of Zafrens, a San Diego biotech reinventing drug discovery by shrinking a 96-well plate down to 200,000 microwells that image and sequence single cells at once. A physicist by training who admits he was driven less by a love of biology than by dissatisfaction with theoretical physics, he is a serial founder whose previous company Omniome sold to Pacific Biosciences for up to $800 million. His stated goal is not a quick exit but a foundation for smart people to do important things for the next 100 years.
Hovhannes Kuloghlyan
Hovhannes Kuloghlyan is a co-founder and Head of Operations at Wirestock, a San Francisco-based platform that sits at the intersection of the creator economy and AI data infrastructure. With a PhD in Cosmology from Yerevan Physics Institute and early career stints in blockchain development with Ripple, he transitioned into building one of the world's leading platforms for ethically sourced multimodal AI training data. Wirestock now serves over 700,000 creators globally and surpassed a $40M annual revenue run rate, closing a $23M Series A in May 2026. Kuloghlyan also chairs Grōksmith, a software design and development company with clients including PwC, the Ethereum Foundation, and UEFA.
Jeff Schneble
Jeff Schneble is the CEO of Human Interest, a San Francisco-based fintech company on a mission to close America's $28 trillion retirement savings gap by making 401(k) and 403(b) plans affordable and accessible for small and medium-sized businesses. A physicist turned venture capitalist turned operator, Schneble brought together a rare trifecta of academic rigor (PhD from Cambridge, MBA from Harvard), investment experience (Partner at Wing Venture Capital), and hands-on operational chops (Silver Lake Partners) before taking the helm at Human Interest in 2019. Under his leadership, the company has grown to serve over 45,000 companies, surpassed $200 million in ARR, raised over $1 billion in total funding at a $3 billion valuation, and is eyeing a public listing.
Francisco Leport
Francisco Leport is the co-founder and CEO of Gordian Biotechnology, a South San Francisco-based company pioneering high-throughput in vivo drug discovery for age-related diseases. Trained as a physicist at Stanford, Leport pivoted from particle physics and energy tech into biotech, driven by a lifelong fascination with longevity sparked by his mother's fruit fly research. Gordian's signature 'mosaic screening' platform uses gene therapy vectors and single-cell RNA sequencing to test hundreds of therapies simultaneously in single animal models, with an AI system called Pythia scoring results against human disease signatures - achieving 80% accuracy in predicting clinical outcomes. The company raised a $60M Series A in April 2024, backed by Founders Fund, Gigafund, and The Longevity Fund, and in early 2026 announced a research collaboration with Pfizer to accelerate obesity drug discovery.
Shaun Maguire
Shaun Maguire is a partner at Sequoia Capital who bridges the worlds of theoretical physics and venture capital. With a PhD in quantum gravity from Caltech under John Preskill, he co-founded the cybersecurity company Expanse (acquired by Palo Alto Networks for over $1 billion) while completing his doctorate. At Sequoia, he leads investments in deep tech, aerospace, defense, and AI, backing companies like SpaceX, xAI, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Before Sequoia, he was a partner at Google Ventures, where he led investments in Stripe, IonQ, and Opendoor. His unique background combines rigorous theoretical physics research on multiboundary wormholes with a track record of building and backing billion-dollar companies at the frontier of technology.