The >commit team

The team behind >commit, backing commercial open-source founders.

• Abel Samot — Partner (focus: Data · AI · Robotics). Abel is a founding partner at >commit. He started coding and building projects at a young age, before becoming an AI engineer deploying deep learning models (BERT, etc.) in large enterprises. He later spent six years at Red River West investing in infrastructure software, while building the data team and the firm's data platform. He holds engineering and business degrees. A music lover, pianist and DJ in his spare time, as well as a cooking and running enthusiast, his passion for new technologies is matched by a deep interest in history.
• Olivier Huez — Partner (focus: Hardware · Cybersecurity · AI). Olivier is part of >commit's founding team. Spent a decade at Orange and then as CFO of two startups before crossing to venture, where he co-founded C4 Ventures and backed companies like Graphcore, Riskified and Via (the last two IPO'd on NYSE). General Partner at Red River West. Polytechnique Engineer who grabbed an accountancy degree along the way (confuses people at times). French and British, lived in Pretoria, Washington DC and London, now sharing his time between Geneva and Paris. Plays the saxophone in a band. Black belt in Judo, the dojo hasn't seen him in a while, world traveler.
• Max Corbani — Partner (focus: DevTools · Infrastructure · AI). Max is part of >commit's founding team, after years on both sides of the table. He started Symolia, then Dashblock, a browser agent he took through Y Combinator (S19), before joining the VC world to back OSS and infra founders between Europe and the US. Graduated in civil engineering, though tech had him hooked long before the diploma did. He's lived in Brazil, the US, Hungary, and France. Climbs and plays handpan in theory. In practice, survives three kids.
• Thomas Saudemont — Tech Lead (focus: Data · AI · Cybersecurity). Thomas leads tech at >commit, building the data and AI tools that power the fund’s sourcing and research. Before that, he contributed to open-source blockchain initiatives and worked at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces’ Cyber Defense Command, COMCYBER. He holds an engineering degree in cybersecurity and spent over two years studying across Canada and Estonia. Curious by default, Thomas enjoys trying to understand complex adaptive systems, from biology to financial markets. Past the rabbit holes, he is usually wishing he was closer to a surfboard.
• Mark Porter — Technical advisor (focus: Databases · Distributed Systems · AI). Mark advises >commit and its portfolio founders on technical and management topics. He's been coding since 16, starting on a 4K machine with BASIC and Z80 assembly, and has spent 30+ years building software and fixing broken architectures and teams. Mark served as CTO at dbt Labs, MongoDB and Grab, and as General Manager at AWS, where he ran RDS, Aurora and Postgres across some of the largest fleets on earth. A Caltech engineer, he's also sat on the boards of GitLab, MariaDB and Splyt. He's a husband and dad of five and a half grown kids who's now back in the editor pretty much every day thanks to AI.