unusual-ventures
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Jyoti Bansal Is Building the Factory After the Code
He waited seven years for permission to start. Then he sold AppDynamics on the eve of its IPO, discovered retirement was a poor fit, and returned to the workbench. Now Harness is his attempt to organize everything that happens after code.
Paxton AI
Paxton AI is an all-in-one generative AI assistant built for lawyers. It handles legal research, document drafting, contract review, and mass document analysis across U.S. federal and state law, with a published 94% non-hallucination rate benchmarked against Stanford research. Founded in 2023 by Tanguy Chau and Michael Ulin, the company is based in Palo Alto and has raised $28M total, including a $22M Series A led by Unusual Ventures in January 2025.
Ryan Thompson
Ryan Thompson is General Counsel and Partner at Felicis, a Menlo Park-based venture capital firm that has backed over 50 unicorns and raised a $900M Fund X in 2025. A lawyer-turned-operator-turned-investor, Ryan brings nearly two decades of legal and operational muscle to one of Silicon Valley's most decorated early-stage firms. Before Felicis, he served as COO and General Counsel at Unusual Ventures and as General Counsel and VP of HR at Shape Security — which sold to F5 Networks for over $1 billion. He spent nine years as a corporate attorney at Goodwin Procter and DLA Piper, working on VC financings, M&A, and IPOs before crossing the table to the operator side.