Andrew Brackin

In 2013 he was selected for that year’s Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry. The published list gives him as a fellow from London, U.K., aged 18, and says that he had co-founded a marketplace for designers that grew to 100,000 signups and ran Tomorrow’s Web, an event for young technologists with hundreds of attendees and major sponsors; as a fellow he was to work on Bunchy, a funding platform that lets organizations raise money from their audience on their social platforms and websites. His biography at Gradient says that he is originally from London and was a 2013 Thiel Fellow, one of 20 recipients worldwide selected to receive $100,000 to pursue entrepreneurship in place of college.⁠[1][2]

On June 4, 2013, UKTN included him in a feature on London’s young technology entrepreneurs; its profile lines give his age as 18 and his education as the Brit School. The feature states that he decided not to go to university after winning the $100,000 Thiel Fellowship and had just relocated to Silicon Valley, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, to work on his company, Bunchy.⁠[3]

Asked whether he felt he had missed out on university, he answers that he had not: he had an incredible opportunity to work on what he wanted to, to spend time with like-minded young founders and creators, and a great platform to launch something from; he says that he sees the value of university for many people but thinks he will learn far more life and business lessons from two years in the fellowship than he could have anywhere else. The feature uses one of his remarks as a pull quote: “Your inexperience is overlooked because you’re going out and doing it at a young age”.⁠[3]

On June 7, 2013, UKTN published a Q&A with him, introducing him as 18, the founder of Bunchy and a winner of the Thiel Fellowship. In it he says that he is a startup founder, that he runs the Tomorrow’s Web event every quarter, and that he had been involved with London startups and events since the days before Tech Hub; asked why he chose this path, he says it was because he had already co-founded a marketplace that grew to 100,000 users and wanted to continue working on startups.⁠[4]

Asked what he was going to do in Silicon Valley, he says: “I’m going to be working on my startup and engage in meetings, events and goings on with the fellowship to accelerate my progress and build a network in Silicon Valley.”⁠[4]

Asked whether young people in London’s Tech City were being supported enough by the government, the TCIO and other technology initiatives, he says that he does not know what initiatives there are in particular and that he is not really getting any support and does not want any either; that the startup loans are interesting, seem useful for some and are going in the right direction; and that he gets the same amount of support from the TCIO as any other founder, which he calls a great amount. He says that bringing young people together to collaborate adds the most value, and that creating such networks and some structure that lets founders keep working adds more value than certain schemes. On the disadvantages of being under 25 in Tech City, he says that there are not a lot and that he does not think much changes at 26, and that some later-stage investors may require more experience than young founders have, though this is not often the case; he thinks that there is too much focus on starting companies and too little on what one is actually creating. He says: “There’s no age limit on building a really valuable product.”⁠[4]

He says that what he likes most about Tech City is the community, seeing people come from around the world to Silicon Drinkabout, and seeing startups appear on Old Street in formerly run-down shops and buildings; the London founders he says he respects are Ian Hogarth (Songkick), Andrew McDonough (chief technology officer of Tribe Sports), Michael Acton Smith (MindCandy) and Ed Cooke (chief executive of Memrise), and he also names Dennis Crowley and Jack Dorsey, calling both great entrepreneurs. Asked for his advice to young people getting into London’s technology ecosystem, he says: “Go to events, get internships or roles and get involved.”⁠[4]

His biography at Gradient states that he began his career at Jobr, a mobile job search app. Global Venturing writes that he was head of growth at the job search app Jobr for Business, where he was part of the founding team.⁠[2][5]

On June 8, 2016, TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry published the news that the recruitment site Monster (Monster.com) had acquired Jobr on undisclosed terms. The article states that Jobr was based in San Francisco, had raised $2 million in seed funding in 2014 and made a swipe-based job-finding app; that job seekers had swiped on jobs more than 100 million times, by Jobr’s count; that the app was not being shut down and would be integrated further with Monster’s platform; and that the whole team was joining Monster and staying in San Francisco.⁠[6]

He later worked at Newfront, a commercial insurance brokerage; his biography at Gradient calls him its founding Head of Growth and states that Newfront was acquired by WTW for $1.3 billion in 2025.⁠[7][5]

In 2020 he and Simon Burns co-founded Vial, a clinical trial services company. General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry writes that Vial launched in 2020 and that its two product-focused co-founders set out to build a contract research organization (CRO) that keeps pace with biotech companies and delivers trials on time.⁠[5][8]

Vial’s media kit starts its timeline at September 2020 and says that Andrew and Simon started Vial with the vision of enabling biotechs to cure all human disease; it says that the two started the company after a dinner conversation about a CRISPR biotech’s delayed, over-budget trial and then visited research sites across the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry to learn about the industry’s problems. It lists a $6 million Series A, a $35 million Series B and a $67 million Series B-2, gives total funding as more than $100 million, and names General Catalyst, Box Group and Byers Capital as investors.⁠[9]

In a newsletter essay published on July 30, 2023, Elliot Hershberg describes him as a Thiel Fellow originally from the United Kingdom, with the word “tenacious,” and writes that Simon Burns had been a product manager at Opendoor and later worked at ChimeChimeU.S. financial technology company offering accounts, payments and related services through partner banks, founded in 2012 by Chris Britt and Ryan King.Open the full entry; the essay calls Vial a CRO co-founded by a tech product manager and a Thiel Fellow.⁠[10]

On November 30, 2022, General Catalyst published a post saying that it was leading Vial’s $67 million Series B and that Vial had built expertise in oncology, gastroenterology and dermatology. Becker’s Hospital Review writes that the investment brought Vial’s cumulative equity funding to more than $100 million and that Hemant Taneja, chief executive and managing director of General Catalyst, sat on Vial’s board.⁠[8][11]

Outsourcing-Pharma’s article on the round states that Vial was co-founded by Simon Burns, its chief executive, and Andrew Brackin, its chief financial officer, that it was headquartered in San Francisco, and that it then offered its CRO services across oncology, dermatology, ophthalmology, gastroenterology, neurology and cardiology, and planned to expand to all therapeutic areas.⁠[12]

On February 1, 2024, Global Venturing published the news that he had joined Gradient Ventures as a partner, in an article that also covers the hiring of Siri Srinivas; the article describes Gradient Ventures as the artificial intelligence fund run by AlphabetAlphabetAlphabet is an American technology holding company formed in 2015 through a restructuring of Google, whose businesses include Google as well as companies in autonomous driving, life sciences, and early-stage technology investment. The group reports its businesses as Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets.Open the full entry, formed in 2017, investing at the seed and Series A stages and holding more than 100 active portfolio companies, and says that he had spent nearly four years at Vial.⁠[5]

The article quotes him on LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry. He says that, as a former founder, he has been impressed by how aligned Gradient is with founders and by how much they value the support it provides; he adds: “I love working with founders at the idea stage, and am interested in applications of AI in healthcare and legacy industries”.⁠[5]

On June 4, 2024, he and Zach Bratun-Glennon published a joint post on Gradient’s website about Forge’s seed round, which Gradient led. The post describes Forge as an AI-powered procurement management platform for hardware companies that uses large language models to read emails, purchase orders and spreadsheets and integrates with ERP, accounting, messaging and contract management software; its founders are Emir Sahmanovic and Haris Sahmanovic, and Emir had been a propulsion engineer at Blue OriginBlue OriginBlue Origin is a private spaceflight company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000 and headquartered in Kent, Washington. It develops the reusable suborbital rocket New Shepard, the heavy-lift launch vehicle New Glenn, the BE-4 engine and the Blue Moon lunar lander, and is one of NASA’s lunar lander providers for the Artemis program. In 2026 it took outside investment for the first time, at a valuation of more than $130 billion.Open the full entry and Stoke SpaceStoke SpaceStoke Space is a U.S. aerospace company founded in 2019 by Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman. It develops the Nova launch vehicle for full, rapid reuse of both stages, with manufacturing in Kent, Washington, testing in Moses Lake and launch infrastructure at Cape Canaveral, Florida.Open the full entry.⁠[13]

On October 16, 2024, he published a post on Gradient’s website about Paladin’s $5.2 million seed round, which Gradient led with participation from Khosla VenturesKhosla VenturesKhosla Ventures (KV) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It made heavy early bets on clean technology, became OpenAI’s first venture capital investor in 2019, and its portfolio also includes companies such as DoorDash, Block (formerly Square), Impossible Foods, and Rocket Lab.Open the full entry, 1517 and Toyota Ventures. Paladin, founded by Divyaditya ShrivastavaDivyaditya ShrivastavaDivyaditya Shrivastava (commonly Divy Shrivastava) is an entrepreneur, the co-founder and chief executive of the Houston-based drone company Paladin, and a 2018 Thiel Fellow. Paladin develops drones and software that fly automatically to the scene after a 911 call and give police, fire and other first responders a live aerial view.Open the full entry (“Divy Shrivastava” in the post), uses autonomous drones to give first responders real-time aerial views of emergencies.⁠[14]

On March 3, 2026, he published a post on Gradient’s website about Vera Health. The post states that Gradient led the company’s seed round alongside Garry TanGarry TanGarry Tan is a Canadian-born ethnically Chinese technology entrepreneur, product design and engineering practitioner, and venture capitalist who currently serves as president, CEO, and general partner of Y Combinator. He worked on early product and engineering at Palantir, co-founded Posterous, Posthaven, and Initialized Capital, led early investments in companies including Coinbase, and has long been involved in San Francisco local public affairs.Open the full entry at Y Combinator; that Vera is a retrieval-first clinical AI tool that searches more than 60 million peer-reviewed papers, drug databases and institutional guidelines and integrates more than 900 medical calculators, drug-dosing tools and specialty-specific clinical frameworks; that its founders, Maxime Allouch and Taieb Bennani, are MIT graduates who both grew up in physician households; and that Vera Health that day announced a formal partnership with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), whose clinical guidelines are integrated directly into Vera.⁠[15]

On May 4, 2026, he published a post on Gradient’s website about Enzo Health. The post states that Gradient led the company’s $4 million seed round in 2024, that N47 later led a $20 million Series A, and that the company’s total funding is $26 million; that Enzo is an AI platform for home health whose products include Enzo Intake, Enzo Scribe and Enzo QA; and that Enzo’s revenue had grown more than 40-fold over the preceding 12 months and that the organizations it powers support more than 500,000 patients a year.⁠[16]

As of November 2026, Gradient’s website lists him as a partner who invests in vertical AI, healthcare and the application layer; his page lists the posts he wrote on Enzo Health, Vera Health, Paladin and Forge.⁠[2]

His biography at Gradient states that he lives in San Francisco and enjoys politics and live music.⁠[2]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

Newfront: Official website: https://www.newfront.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Vial: Official website: https://vial.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

Gradient: Official website: https://gradient.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

X: Public account: https://x.com/brackin (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewbrackin (opens in a new window).⁠[2]