Over the years Rob has supported more than 100 founders building lasting businesses that deliver breakout products and services. His current focus is on emerging platforms, which includes new opportunities in robotics, transportation, virtual reality, consumer hardware, and space technologies. Before co-founding Shasta in 2004, Rob was a general partner at New Enterprise Associates. Rob led Shasta's Series A investment in Nest, which was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014. His current investments include Doctor on Demand, Fetch Robotics, Spire Global, Starship Technologies, Survios, Tonal, and Turo. Early in his career, Rob served as an engineer in the Astro Space division of Martin Marietta, where he helped build the first A2100 satellite, a platform which is still in production today at Lockheed.
Rob earned an MS in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia. He also holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Palmer Scholar. In his spare time, Rob loves racing cars and earned his SCCA competition license in 2016. To date, he has raced competitively at Laguna Seca, Circuit of the Americas, Sebring, Road America, Yas Marina, Watkins Glen, and Sears Point Sonoma Raceway.