Sonny Vu
Founder of Alabaster
Sonny Vu
Founder of Alabaster
Salem, New Hampshire
Overview
Work Experience
Founder
2016 - Current
Investing in founders of startups that have the potential for positive, planet-level impact. Mostly seed to series A. Themes in materials science, industrial biotech, sensors / semiconductors, enterprise AI, digital health.
Alabaster is a start-up investor in founders to help them grow breakthrough companies that will make a positive, planet-level impact.
Director (Founder)
2014 - 2023
Supported CEO on a variety of strategic, commercial, and operational matters. Company invents and sells lab operations monitoring and analytics tools and services. Supported CEO in raising $60m (Seed, Series Seed, A, B).
Elemental Machines delivers data-driven insights that improves R&D, laboratory operations, and manufacturing outcomes.
Raised $59,930,000.00 from Gutbrain Ventures, Sageview Capital, Omega Venture Partners and Digitalis Ventures.
Chief Executive Officer
2020 - 2023
Lead efforts to industrialize and bring to market a suite of inventions in materials science, design software, and robotics to automate the production of continuous carbon fiber composite structures. Raised $70m (B Bridge, B1, B2, C, crowd).
Director (Founder)
2019 - 2022
Supported CEO on a variety of strategic, commercial, and operational matters. Company invented and sold products with a novel muscle fitness sensing technology; raised $6.5m (Seed, Series Seed).
Impact Biosystems develops hardware and software solutions for people in the health and fitness space.
Raised $6,600,000.00 from Stadia Ventures.
President and CTO, Connected Devices
2015 - 2018
Lead product development for connected hardware and software for 14 of Fossil Group's owned and licensed brands. Developed new business for connected devices. Scouted emerging technology. Grew Asia-based engineering, design, and marketing teams. Supported growth of wearables revenue to over $300m annually.
Fossil Group, Inc. is a global design, marketing, distribution and innovation company specializing in lifestyle accessories.
CEO, Chairman (Founder)
2011 - 2015
Lead brand / product design (wearables and smart home), marketing, sales; oversaw technical development. Recruited leadership and key team members. Raised $65m (Seed, A, B, C, other). Acquired by Fossil Group in 2015 for $260m.
Misfits is an online seller of watches and accessories.
CEO, Chairman (Founder)
2001 - 2011
Chairman (2005 - 2011): Secured long-term deals and partnerships with Sanofi and Apple, raised $25m (Series C). Designed and implemented digital health strategy; drove product, including the award-winning iBGStar, the world's first iPhone-connected hardware med device. CEO (2001 - 2005): Recruited core teams, drove product strategy/design, helped establish key supplier partnerships, got customers for first $20M+ revenue, raised $22m (Seed, A, B).
AgaMatrix develops and manufactures a line of diabetes products designed to improve the quality of diabetes care.
Raised $152,200,000.00 from Perceptive Advisors and Prospect Capital Management.
CTO (Founder)
1999 - 2001
Lead R&D of natural language processing and machine learning technology for autosummarization and unstructured text search applications. Recruited key technical staff. Raised $8m in venture capital in two rounds. Acquired by AskJeeves (now Ask.com) in 2001.
Researcher
1999 - 1999
Did research in Chinese natural language processing and statistical language modeling for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, and parsing applications.
Microsoft Advertising provides digital advertising solutions.
Education
PhD (ABD)
1996 - 2000
Bachelor’s Degree
1991 - 1996