Team details
Philip Zelitchenko
Data & AI platforms
Turning data into something people can use.
Philip has led data and AI teams at ZoomInfo, DocuSign, and Leadspace. His work connects the data foundation to what a business actually needs: useful products, sound experiments, and machine learning in production.
From operating to investing
In 2025, Theory Ventures introduced Philip as its first entrepreneur in residence. That move extended a career spent building teams and translating technical work into business outcomes.
A wider lens
His public interests include mental models, AI, and wellbeing—how people think, make decisions, and live well.
Ioannis Papapanagiotou
Distributed systems
A systems builder with an educator’s instinct.
Ioannis’s path runs through research, teaching, and large-scale engineering. He has built data platforms at Netflix and Snowflake and holds doctorates in Computer Engineering and Operations Research from NC State.
Building and teaching
His work spans cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and data platforms. Alongside industry, he has taught at Purdue and NC State and mentored startups.
Giving back
Education is more than a credential in his story. NC State recognizes his support for graduate students through teaching, advising, and the Papapanagiotou Ph.D. fellowship he helped establish.
Ippokratis Pandis
Database systems
A researcher who builds—and brings builders together.
Ippokratis’s career connects database research with systems used at scale: IBM DB2 BLU, Cloudera Impala, Amazon Redshift, and Databricks. His Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. explored how transaction processing can scale on modern hardware.
Research into practice
He spent a decade helping shape Redshift before joining Databricks. His work follows a consistent question: how can database architecture evolve with the demands of real applications?
Building the community
He also creates places for the field to exchange ideas. His community service includes the HPTS workshop presidency and chairing SIGMOD 2023; Endeavor Greece lists him as a mentor.
Ali Dasdan
Search & machine learning
Engineering depth, with people at the center.
Ali has led technology organizations at Dropbox and ZoomInfo, and engineering for collaboration products at Atlassian. His experience connects large-scale search, machine learning, and the software people use to work together.
Teams as well as systems
His leadership work spans growing engineering organizations, improving developer productivity, and bringing AI into products. He holds a computer science Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Still asking questions
He continues to publish technical work. A 2026 paper revisits binary search through implementations, tests, and formal proofs—a reminder that even familiar ideas deserve another look.
How we work together
A small core. A broader field of view.
The partners lead the work; the network adds the experience each opportunity requires.
Frame the review
Start with the claims and assumptions that matter, rather than applying the same questions to every company.
Connect the expertise
Bring specialist knowledge and enterprise perspectives into the areas where they add the most value.
Own the judgment
Bring the evidence together and consider the implications for the technology, product, and investment.