About Me

Hi, I’m Tim Edgar. I’m an engineer who is passionate about data and strategy. I have cofounded three startups and worked on Bing, Azure, and Microsoft 365 at Microsoft. As an engineer, I love to tinker and understand how things work. As an entrepreneur, I’m passionate about the application of technology, specifically around decision making with data and machine learning.

In startups, the companies I’ve cofounded are:

Venteur - This is my current venture, where I serve as CTO. We’re tackling health insurance for the self-employed.

Optrilo - Launched Optrilo as CTO and currently serve as a technical advisor. We help enterprises forecast and plan their cloud to maximize the benefits of commitment-based pricing and mitigate capacity risk.

Leafully - Funded by the Department of Energy during Obama’s first administration, we helped utilities engage residents on energy consumption with the smart grid data. Served as CEO.

In total, I’ve spent a decade at Microsoft across various cloud services:

Bing - I pitched and launched Bing Desktop from a weekend hack day project. Additionally, I was a product manager for Bing Bar and Bing on Windows 8. I designed the client instrumentation pipeline that powered search relevance and hold a patent on contextual search experiences.

Azure - I worked both in Azure Fabric and Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure. As a product manager, I launched two Azure Fabric services around streamlining cluster provisioning and hardware remediation. As the author of the Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure Long Range Plan, I managed a multi-billion dollar datacenter capital expenditure portfolio.

Microsoft 365 - I was a product manager on Microsoft Managed Desktop, a relatively new enterprise service offering, where I led multi-tenant management and data insights.

My alma mater is the University of California, Berkeley. Go Bears! I graduated with two engineering degrees, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I enjoy working in robotics, as demonstrated by my senior capstone project.

In my personal life, I’ve been blessed with two boys and a wonderful wife. I love building things with my boys, starting them early with home depot projects and LEGOs at age 2.

You can find me on LinkedIn.

What you’ll find here

My writing aims to explore the insights and discoveries that I’ve gained over my career. Some topics will be about fields I’ve worked in such as data or the cloud. Other topics will be strategies that have enabled me to be more effective in the workplace.

As I have much of my career ahead of me, I still have a lot of learn and am continually refining my strategies and perspectives in my work. My hope is that through sharing my experiences with you we may learn from them together. Please do not hesitate to contact me with inquiries.

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Other Interests

Things I enjoy, but may not write about include:

Books - I’m an avid fan of J. D. Salinger and Brandon Sanderson. I’ve read nearly everything both authors have published.

Strategy Games - I grew up playing Sid Meier’s games like Civilization and Master of Orion. Figuring out systems and refining strategies is something I enjoy both in my work and my hobbies.

Music - I played cello in the San Diego Youth Symphony in high school. Music has been an important part of my life. And it’s something that I’m sharing with my kids as we’re all learning piano together.

Investing - In a similar vein to strategy games, I love exploring investing strategies as a way to further understand the economy.

© 2020 Timothy Edgar
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