Impact and Translational Work
Software and ventures that reached the world.
A record of the software, instruments, and companies that grew out of the
research and made it into use. The five below run in a deliberate arc:
built, measured, translated, building, and backed to market. Where the
work maps cleanly onto an NAE Grand Challenge, that connection is noted.
Helped build
NovoEd
NovoEd grew out of Stanford's Social Algorithms Lab, created by Amin Saberi and Farnaz Ronaghi around my technology entrepreneurship class. I taught the first entrepreneurship MOOC on the platform and gave input on its initial design choices and functionality, then took a year's leave of absence to help build the company: I helped raise the first round of venture capital and, as the initial Director of Partnership Development, brought on the first institutional partners and started the partner newsletter. The platform scaled to tens of thousands of learners across more than 100 countries and was acquired by Devonshire Investors (Fidelity). I also ran a randomized controlled trial on its data: Eesley and Wu, MIS Quarterly 2020, one of the first randomized field experiments in entrepreneurship, linking startup strategy and mentor network diversity to venture outcomes.
Grand Challenge: connects to Advance Personalized Learning.
Measured
University Entrepreneurial Impact Study
Built the measurement methodology with Bill Miller (Stanford) and Ed Roberts (MIT) to quantify the economic footprint of university-trained entrepreneurs. The Stanford study documented nearly 40,000 companies (39,900) generating roughly $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and 5.4 million jobs. The method has since been used to measure entrepreneurial impact at universities worldwide.
Translated
Genocea Biosciences
As an associate at Lux Capital, a founding investor in Genocea, I contributed to the company's early formation: worked with the founding CEO to identify and in-license core intellectual property out of Harvard, and recruited the initial senior scientific team. Genocea became a clinical-stage immunotherapy company and went public on NASDAQ in 2014. An investor-side company-building role, moving science out of the lab and assembling the team.
Building
Policy Credibility Index (Prototype)
A live research instrument, built with Rishee Jain and team. For each policy, it aggregates source information daily, scores how credible the signal looks, maps the trend over time, and attributes which sources move the score. A master ledger of policy signals, organized for capital decisions. Current work, shown as a research tool rather than a product.
Grand Challenge: connects to Engineer the Tools of Scientific Discovery.
Backed to market
Empo Health
Early backer and advisor to Empo Health, a Bay Area medical-device company founded by MIT- and Stanford-trained engineers. Empo built the FDA-listed Empo Footprint, an at-home imaging scale paired with a HIPAA-compliant remote monitoring platform that detects diabetic foot ulcers early, a condition that drives preventable amputations and tens of billions in annual cost. In 2025 the company commercialized the system and began initial sales, having raised about $15 million to date. An early backing and advisory role on a venture that reached the clinic.
Grand Challenge: connects to Advance Health Informatics, and Engineer Better Medicines.
Advising and investing. Early
advisor to
Nexa.ai
(acquired by Qualcomm), and angel investor across roughly two dozen
early-stage ventures.