First Spark Ventures

Todd has a 12 year history of collaborating with Eric Schmidt. He is co-founder and co-chairman of XO Health, a leading health plan startup. Todd was a partner in Venturra, a private equity platform for Indonesian growth companies. Additionally, Todd was co-founder and GP of Priderock, a $2B hedge fund, co-founder and managing partner of J Net Ventures, a venture capital firm that sold to Epoch Holdings, and a founding member of the GP of Rhone Group, an $8B private equity firm. Todd began his career at Lazard Frères. He graduated, cum laude, from Harvard College and received his MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Prior to co-founding First Spark Ventures, Manish was President at SRI International, leading research institute in Silicon Valley and the birthplace of companies such as Intuitive Surgical, Nuance, and Siri. He incubated and invested in over 25 Deep Tech startups, in addition to advising translational programs with the US Government that include agencies such as NASA and Department of Education. Prior to that, he was a serial entrepreneur in Medtech and software, including cofounding Mytrus, a software startup focused on direct-to-participant clinical trials. It was the first company in the world to have FDA approved electronic informed consent. Manish has a postdoc from UCSF in Medical Physics, a PhD from Cornell in Bioengineering, and an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in Aerospace Engineering.

Peter has worked in Silicon Valley as an engineer spanning telecom, defense, and medical imaging. He has always tried to be at the intersection of hardware and software. Peter has wide experience designing analog front-end ASICs, writing simulation software for extremely complex systems, or building extremely complicated medical devices. He holds 25 issued patents for the most basic innovations at the transistor level up to novel very large robotic machines that are used in radiotherapy. He has over 1800 citations for academic work in specialized sensors, medical imaging and radiotherapy. Most recently, Peter was the first employee at Reflexion Medical which successfully developed a robotic real-time imaging device to treat late-stage cancer. He started when the company was just a concept and helped get the device into leading clinics at Stanford, UTSW, City of Hope, and UPMC. Peter has a PhD from Stanford in Bio-engineering and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California San Diego.

Prior to joining First Spark Ventures, Aaron was most recently a Director at Schmidt Futures, leading early stage tech investments. He was formerly a co-founder and Chief Scientist at Searchable.ai, a venture-backed conversational AI startup based in San Francisco. There he led early product development and core R&D, leading to multiple patent filings, published research and beta launch. Before Searchable, Aaron was a technologist at In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of US Defense and Intelligence, focused on deep-tech investments in AI, AR/VR and quantum computing. He is currently an advisor to X (the moonshot factory) and serves on a number of startup, VC and university advisory boards. Aaron holds a PhD in quantum simulation and machine learning from Stanford University.

Prior to joining First Spark, Jennifer was an Associate Director on the Ventures team at SRI International. She led the incubation program for its spin-out companies, as well as the institute’s market analysis team, focused on transitioning Deep Tech from lab to market. Prior to SRI, she was a business lead on the North American investment and innovation team at Konica Minolta, leading investments and partnerships in the areas of robotics and enterprise software. She had co-founded a venture backed social commerce startup. Jennifer holds a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Danny is a General Partner focused on the First Spark Opportunities fund. Danny founded his first startup as a freshman in high school in Canada. After making several high-profile investments, he joined ZJBIO, a successful antibody company. He then moved on to lead the investment in Mesa Biotech, a San Diego based molecular diagnostics company. He served as a board member and the company was acquired by Thermo Fisher. Danny has made over 16 investments in the biotech sector. He has also served as the Chief Investment Officer at AP Investment, a large investment vehicle for a family office.

Peter is a veteran technology investor with more than 25 years of private and public market experience. Most recently, Peter was the founder and general partner at Dune Road Capital, a multi-asset class investment fund focused on the technology sector. Prior to Dune Road, Peter co-founded Empire Capital, a technology-focused hedge fund. During his 20-year tenure at Empire, Peter invested across a broad range of technology innovations and led the firm’s venture capital efforts. Peter began his career at Morgan Stanley in the investment banking division where he was trained in quantitative finance. Peter received an A.B. from Harvard University.

Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, known for his pivotal role in the growth of Google as CEO and Chairman from 2001 to 2011, overseeing its transformation from a small startup to a global tech giant. Working alongside Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its products, while maintaining a strong culture of innovation. Eric founded the Special Competitive Studies Project in 2021, a non-profit initiative focused on strengthening America’s long-term AI and technological competitiveness in national security, the economy, and society. Most recently in 2024, Eric and his wife Wendy co-founded Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit organization working to advance science and technology that deepens human understanding of the natural world and develops solutions to global issues. He has written several acclaimed books, including his latest titled Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit (2024), co-written with the late Dr. Henry Kissinger and Craig Mundie.

Gal is a General Partner at First Spark Ventures. Most recently, Gal was a Director at Schmidt Futures. Prior to that, Gal served in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office as an Economic Advisor focusing on technology and finance. He served in an elite Special Forces unit in the Israeli Defense Forces. Gal is a graduate of the Oxford University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.