A small firm, built around two convictions.
Milton Maxwell is a small research-driven investment firm built around two convictions: that markets efficiently allocate capital when they're allowed to, and that technology is the single biggest force reshaping where capital should go next. We named the firm for Milton Friedman and James Clerk Maxwell to keep both of those convictions visible in everything we sign.
We started Milton Maxwell because we wanted to work the way we work best: small, opinionated, technically literate, close to the operators we admire, and unafraid to use software to do more of the thinking. Public markets are dense with signal that nobody has the time to read. Modern AI lets a small team read all of it.
That combination, old-school discipline about business quality, paired with a research stack that scales with software, is what the firm is.
Most of what we do happens in our space at SF Patchworks in San Francisco, surrounded by the engineers, founders, and operators whose work shapes the public companies we follow. That proximity is part of the edge.
We're at the beginning.
Engineering and operating background; runs the research stack and public-equity book alongside Alex.
Charlie spent 15 years building software at the intersection of platforms and AI before turning to investing full-time. He was an engineer at Lyft through the IPO (most recently on the Level 5 autonomous-vehicle team) and earlier at Nvidia, AMD, Adept, Klout, and Cisco. That stack, chips, frameworks, applications, is the same stack the firm now invests across.
He's an angel and advisor to a small set of operators he's known for years (including Tribe.ai, Fleetworks, Marathon Fusion, and Triply), and an LP in SPC, Iterative.vc, Banana Fund, and Mission St Capital. He brings to MM the operator's instinct for what a company is actually doing under the marketing copy, and the engineer's instinct for how to automate the parts of research that don't need a human.
- 01IPO with Lyft (2019); engineering on Lyft Level 5 (autonomous vehicles)
- 02Earlier engineering roles at Nvidia, AMD, Adept, Klout, Cisco
- 03Angel / advisor: Tribe.ai, Fleetworks, Marathon Fusion, Triply
- 04LP: SPC Fund, Iterative.vc, Banana Fund, Mission St Capital
Three-time founder and engineer; runs strategy and origination alongside Charlie.
Alex is a three-time founder, most recently a stealth pharmacy AI copilot, previously P2P Labs (zero-knowledge cryptography research) and Set Labs (DeFi infrastructure), and an early engineer at Square, where he was a part of the IPO. He has also held engineering roles at Caviar, Apple, and Zynga.
That combination, founder, public-company operator, infrastructure builder, is rare, and it's the lens through which Alex evaluates businesses. He brings to MM a deep network of founders and a steady source of conviction about which technology bets actually compound and which only look like they do. He's an LP in SPC Fund and Seven Hill Ventures, and an angel investor in 20+ companies.
- 013x founder: stealth pharmacy AI copilot, P2P Labs (ZK cryptography research), Set Labs (DeFi infrastructure)
- 02IPO with Square; earlier engineering at Square, Caviar, Apple, Zynga
- 03LP: SPC Fund, Seven Hill Ventures
- 04Angel: 20+ companies across AI, fintech, and infrastructure
Our space in San Francisco.
Milton Maxwell is based at SF Patchworks, our physical space in San Francisco.
User: one paragraph about what SF Patchworks is, who else works out of it, why it matters to MM. Keep it short, three sentences. If you'd rather not describe it at length here, the link out is fine on its own.