Meet Zal and our advisors,
who are ready to support you.

After ten years building software, I joined a16z in 2013 and was originally tasked to search for the next big consumer or enterprise app. However, I got pulled into digital health by dozens of exceptional founders.

I volunteered to lead those efforts and supported a16z’s initial health investments. My interests then expanded to include computational and synthetic biology. In 2015, I was part of a small team that launched a16z’s first Bio Fund and thereafter, in 2016, left to start Refactor, where I'm now managing 4 funds and $225M in AUM.

I later expanded to other "hard but not impossible" categories such as energy, aerospace, and critical materials. Founders who build in these categories are a unique, driven breed who believe R&D can be the ultimate moat. I created Refactor to be one of the first institutional investors backing those type of founders striving to manifest category-defining hard tech companies.

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