817 - Kojo Osei, Partner at Matrix Partners

Kojo Osei is a partner at Matrix Partners.

A Little More On Kojo (from the Matrix website)

I grew up in Accra, Ghana’s commercial capital known for its bustling street markets. My mother was an entrepreneur who ran a small retail business. She was the first entrepreneur I worked with. From her, I learned that doing what you love leads to persistence and ultimately, success.

In college, I fell in love with math and computer science. I was drawn to programming as a way to turn imagination into reality. I bought in fully to the promise of technology as a tool to solve hard problems. Espresso-fueled late-night coding sessions were common. That and squash round robins were the twin pillars of my college years.

After college, I turned down a corporate job to join a startup called Sirona as the first employee and founding engineer. After building our initial product and early engineering team I took on the challenge of building out a product organization as Head of Product. At Sirona, we built managed cloud infrastructure and machine learning workflows for radiology clinics. Building critical infrastructure and innovating with our users every day was a highlight of my career.

My startup experience at Sirona gave me a deep appreciation for the founder journey and influenced how I approach investing. I look for founders who radically challenge the status quo and have the self-awareness to chart a practical path to their vision.