On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2021. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Tyler ↗
In their words
I don't have a thesis, I just back really good people. It sounds like a really lazy way of saying that, but it's basically that people know their business far better than I ever will.
As an investor, I'm just looking for: what do other people know well, where are they going from intuition to proof, and how can I go along for the ride?
One of my biggest complaints is when people ask me for something that I can easily help with, and I think it's cool and I think it's exciting — and then I don't hear from them for nine months. Tell me if it worked. Keep me in the loop.
More from TechTO ×1
Quick answers
Who is Tyler Willis?
A co-founder and chief operating officer of Unsupervised, an enterprise AI company he started with Noah Horton. He is also a long-standing angel investor. Before that he was at Involver, the social marketing software company he joined at 19, which Oracle bought in 2012.
What does Unsupervised do?
It helps very large companies use the complexity of their own data to find opportunities that move a metric they care about — reducing churn, increasing upsell, addressing risk. Willis described the point as finding what is in the data rather than answering questions someone already thought to ask.
How did he start angel investing?
After Involver sold in 2012, with liquidity and a lot of friends starting companies. He said he told a friend at a bar that he wished he had enough money to invest in dozens of companies, since diversification matters, and was told to just get started and work out the rest later.