Finding Engineers with Empathy
When we first met Skopos Labs in 2019, their pitch deck read like a research project. Most investors passed. The “Proprietary Artificial Intelligence” and “deep learning methodology” in their deck sounded more like a science experiment than an investable business. AI was still fringe then—and unless you had worked on machine learning at [...INSERT FLASHY STARTUP…], few venture investors could diligence it, let alone write a check.
We wish we could say we saw the future—predicted it even. Or that we knew we were catching the first wave of an AI boom. Truthfully, we didn’t need to. Instead, we aligned conviction with our thesis at Atypical and backed the rare thing we look for: Engineers with Empathy.
A Team Worth Backing
Skopos was a team with a unique mix of legal expertise and machine learning through natural language processing ("NLP")—something that wouldn’t hit the zeitgeist until years later with the arrival of ChatGPT.
Early conversations with the founder John Nay made it clear: he was the rare founder who embodied what we call Engineers with Empathy. Those with the raw IQ to build impossible things, and the humility to inspire and cultivate the right team of superpowers around them.
Skopos had already cracked an extraordinary challenge: understanding legislative change and its impact on economic indicators. They could track how shifts in Congress or the White House would ripple through entire sectors down to individual companies. The dataset was clearly valuable, and the team was extraordinary. The only question was where this would go.
We were the only institutional venture fund in their seed round—clearly not driven by FOMO, but because we saw frontier technology in the right hands. People who could translate “what it does” into “why it matters.”
The One-Way Door
Like many startups, Skopos spent time wayfinding around product/market fit. They had built something powerful, but the right application hadn’t yet emerged. Eventually, they reached a critical decision point—a one-way door with two very different paths. One was easier, with clear market pull already. The other was hazy, yet was anchored by a clear north star—it would be a harder path.
Before committing, Skopos did something that, in our view, is a superpower: they asked for advice. Not as a performance, but with genuine curiosity and the humility to filter what mattered from what didn’t. We talked through what they had built, what motivated them, and what would get them out of bed each morning to attack the day.
It wasn’t about a single moment of genius. It was about asking pointed questions—and listening, weighing, deciding with conviction. Clearly, Skopos decided on the harder path, because we wouldn’t be here otherwise. It was a crazy move. Yet within hours, the team’s energy shifted and that very night, they got to work.
John Nay and Erkko Etula leaned into the harder path, and built Brooklyn Investment Group (BKLN).
Solve the Problem
There is no universal definition of empathy, yet we continue to double and triple down on our belief that the rarest and best founders combine deep technical aptitude with genuine empathy. For frontier startups, one of the clearest signals is how founders talk about their mission—inside the company vs. outside with customers.
For deeply technical founders, it’s natural to lead with the brilliance of their architecture—and with employees or investors, that’s exactly what you want. But customers don’t buy architecture; they buy relief from pain. The rarest founders know how to switch gears. That’s empathy as a superpower.
The BKLN team had already solved the frontier technology challenge. There was plenty of technology they could talk about. And yet, they poured their energy into delivering measurable value for customers. To the outside world, BKLN was never marketed as a frontier technology—it was an indispensable tool for wealth management. The architecture was invisible, yet the impact was not. They were clearly relieving pain. AUM climbed, partnerships multiplied, and their reputation compounded.
By January 2025, BKLN had unlocked significant demand. We had front-row seats to their momentum, so we led an investment round that included strategic participation from S&P Global, bringing BKLN into the orbit of major asset managers and financial firms. Institutions with trillions in AUM weren't just kicking the tires—they were willing to build future infrastructure around what this team had created.
The Right Partner for the Right Outcome
Just five months later, Nuveen—a long-time partner and close ally—acquired BKLN to bring that talent and tooling in-house.
It was a tremendous outcome for tremendous people. What began as frontier NLP research became the foundation for transforming institutional wealth management.
A team most investors passed on built something so valuable that a major financial institution made it core to their strategy.
Compounding Relationships
The story didn’t end with the acquisition. John Nay reached out before he officially stepped away from BKLN—not for capital, but for perspective on his next venture. Those early conversations, built on years of trust and shared conviction, led directly to our participation in his new company’s first financing round.
This is the multiplier effect of backing engineers with empathy: when you're valuable early, you earn access to what they build next. The best founders don't just create successful companies—they create platforms for serial innovation.
The Pattern (or Lack Thereof)
We back engineers with empathy who are building at the frontier. The trajectory may not always be obvious, and there are few, if any, patterns to match against. But that misses the point.
Markets change. Technologies change. The one constant is the founder archetype we back.
From the printing press to the industrial revolution to the personal computer, the breakthroughs that reshaped the world weren’t driven by pattern-matching—they were driven by technical geniuses who could communicate and scale their ideas, amass the right superpowers around them, and win hearts and minds one at a time. Raw technical ability gets you the impossible technology. Empathy gets you the team, the relationships, and the patience to wayfind toward the highest-impact outcomes. Together, they don’t just iterate their way to better solutions—they create entirely new categories that reshape industries.
This is why we invest in engineers with empathy. They are the timeless constant in a world of shifting markets and technologies. They build the future—and when you’re there early and help them, they bring you along for what comes next.
Crazy is just a numbers game—until enough people believe.