About Me

Hi, I'm Tim Edgar. At my core, I'm an engineer — not just by training, but as part of who I am. To me, being an engineer means working under constraints, creating value, and solving real-world problems with creativity and discipline.

Across my journey — from co-founding three startups to building large-scale systems at Microsoft in Bing, Azure, and Microsoft 365 — one throughline has remained constant: a passion for data, machine learning, and the wisdom of the community. I believe technology should empower individuals to make better decisions by amplifying collective insights, not by replacing human judgment.

Above all, I'm driven by impact. Engineering is not about the perfect answers or elegant theories — it's about delivering outcomes that matter. Whether tinkering as an engineer, building as an entrepreneur, or shaping strategy as a CTO, I approach each role with the same conviction: technology should empower people and elevate the way we live.

Startups

While in different domains, each of these ventures reflects the same belief: that when people are given the right tools and information, they can make choices that create lasting impact.

At Venteur, where I serve as CTO, my work is driven by a belief that people deserve control over their healthcare. Too often, employers dictate one-size-fits-no-one coverage that shapes access and affordability. We’re building a personalized system that redirects the $1.6T spent on employer-sponsored health insurance into the hands of individuals — so healthcare can truly be centered on the people it serves.
At Optrilo, as CTO, I focused on democratizing long-range forecasting and capital planning expertise. Enterprises struggled with cloud commitments that carried high costs and uncertainty. We built tools to turn uncertainty into clarity, giving finance and engineering teams the tools to make confident, data-driven capital decisions.
At Leafully, as CEO, I co-founded the company to improve the efficiency of the power grid by reducing uneven demand loads. Households couldn't relate to abstract smart grid data, so we reframed energy use in terms of its community impact to drive engagement and behavior change. Funded by the Department of Energy during Obama’s first administration, we launched behavioral energy efficiency programs that shaped demand during peak summer hours.

Microsoft

Over a decade at Microsoft, I built enterprise-grade, hyperscale systems that impacted millions of people and deepened my foundation in cloud and machine learning. These experiences taught me how to deliver products that meet the highest standards of reliability, security, and compliance — lessons that continue to shape my work in healthcare today.

I started my career on the team that launched Bing, driving initiatives across distribution, instrumentation, relevance, and user experience. I earned a patent on contextual search experiences and, after pitching an idea sparked by a customer visit, launched Bing Desktop — my first end-to-end product reaching millions of users.
In Azure, I launched services in Azure Fabric to streamline provisioning and remediation, then authored the Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure Long Range Plan, managing billions in datacenter investments. By applying forecasting and optimization, I helped leadership turn uncertainty around long-lead infrastructure into confident capital decisions.
With Microsoft 365, I helped launch Microsoft Managed Desktop, a new enterprise service reimagining IT management for the cloud era. My focus on multi-tenant management and data insights reinforced my belief that data can cut through complexity and deliver smarter, more adaptive systems for enterprises.

Education

I studied engineering at the University of California, Berkeley (Go Bears!), earning degrees in both Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. That mix of disciplines reflects my lifelong curiosity — from building a robotics senior capstone project that won the department award to designing complex systems throughout my career.

Personal Life

I live in the Pacific Northwest with my wonderful wife and two boys. I grew up in San Diego in a family of engineers and entrepreneurs — my father is a software engineer, my mother is a civil engineer, and together they also ran a small business. That environment shaped both my curiosity for how things work and my drive to build. Today, I love passing that tinkering spirit on to my kids — from LEGOs to weekend Home Depot projects — because making is as much a family tradition as it is a professional one.

What you'll find here

Through writing, I explore ideas that have shaped my career and sparked new perspectives. Some posts dive into domains I’ve worked in, like data, cloud, and healthcare; others reflect on lessons that bring more clarity and impact to how we work.

I still have much to learn, and writing is part of how I refine my thinking. My hope is that by sharing openly, we can learn together and move forward with greater perspective.

You can find me on LinkedIn.

Other Interests

Outside of work, I enjoy exploring systems, stories, and creativity in different forms:

Books — I'm an avid fan of J. D. Salinger and Brandon Sanderson. I've read nearly everything either authors have published.

Strategy Games — I grew up on Sid Meier's Civilization and Master of Orion. Figuring out systems and refining strategies has always been as fun for me in games as it is in work.

Music — I played cello in the San Diego Youth Symphony and now share that love of music with my kids as we all learn piano together.

Investing — Much like strategy games, I enjoy studying investing as a way to better understand systems and the economy.