Interview with Alejandro Cremades
An interview with Alejandro Cremades about raising $130 Million to build a next-generation AI Platform to simplify AI development and deployment after multiple startups and acaling AI at Google. You can read the full blog post here, and its embedded below.
Multiple startups, scaling AI at Google, and now raised $130 million to build a next-generation AI platform
Tim Davis's entrepreneurial journey reflects a rare blend of intellectual curiosity, scrappy resilience, and a deep commitment to building relationships and networks. He has an exciting story, which includes an acquihire by Google and the launch of his latest venture, Modular.
Tim’s career trajectory started from gaming on a Commodore 64 and progressed to founding a food delivery startup before Uber Eats. His story isn’t just about pivots and products; it offers valuable lessons in adapting, grit, and navigating ecosystems on both sides of the Pacific.
In a riveting interview on the Dealmakers Podcast, Tim discussed hypergrowth companies, working at a large tech giant like Google, and raising an impressive $130M for Modular.
Growing Up in Melbourne - The Early Years
Tim was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, in the 1980s and 1990s. His mom was an artist, and his dad was a banker. Along with his older brother, Tim became an avid gamer, playing and honing his skills at Boulder Dash, Maniac Mansion, and Prince of Persia.
Soon, the brothers were modding many of the games to alter their files and change their behavior, appearance, or even introduce entirely new content. They would also find hacks for the games, programming in BASIC, and eventually, moved to Windows OS, which users preferred in Australia.
Tim remembers moving quickly to Railway Tycoon and Doom, which fueled his love for technology and computer systems. He also had a keen interest in puzzles and math throughout school. But the path from childhood gamer to Silicon Valley founder wasn’t linear.
Early Curiosity and a Winding Educational Road
Tim’s academic journey is one of the most eclectic you’ll find. He studied chemical engineering and microbiology, then added commerce, mathematics, an MBA, and even a JD to the mix. “I kept flipping a series of interests,” he says.
Tim recalls how he actually ended up finishing specific parts of the course earlier, but lost interest in fluid mechanics, which was a large part of chemical engineering. He progressed to learning actual science and finance, even exploring the possibility of becoming an investment banker.
But this seemingly scattered path wasn’t aimless; it was a quest for purpose. Despite internships in law firms and banks, Tim found himself disillusioned by the rigid, hierarchical growth trajectories in corporate Australia.
“Even if you were a rockstar, you had to wait your turn. That felt strange.” The clarity Tim needed came from understanding what he didn’t want–to be stuck in a 9-to-5. “Life’s short,” he says. “While you're young, you’ve got time to explore different things. Why not take a shot?”
Now that he is older and has a family, time has become the most scarce resource available. Tim comments wryly that you don’t have an appreciation for that when you're younger. He was keen on building an interesting business, reasoning that, worst case, he could always lean on his top-tier education.
As Tim sees it, growing up in Australia gave him the added advantage of a government-backed education, which didn’t saddle him with a massive student debt, unlike in many other countries.
Entering the Startup Arena: Image Recognition and Fundraising Lessons
Tim’s first foray into startups came while studying patent and trademark law. “I was fascinated by how much effort went into innovation,” he says. Since he had studied computer science and technology, he was inspired to build a business around them.
That fascination led to an image recognition startup focused on identifying branded content inside photos, an idea rooted in intellectual property logic. Tim began to think about designing a way for brands to find themselves inside the images and monetize them directly.
But the Australian fundraising ecosystem at the time was harsh. “Angels would offer $100K for 20-30% of your company,” Tim explains, a model fundamentally incompatible with scaling. “We realized, if we really want to do this, we need to go to the US.”
Tim saw that eventually they would have to raise several more funding rounds, for the company, CrowdSend, to become profitable.
But he would have given away a massive percentage to someone who hadn’t fundamentally contributed a considerable amount of capital versus the risk Tim was taking
Moving to the US and Landing in Silicon Valley
In 2012, Tim boarded a one-way flight to Silicon Valley, landing in a hacker house he had found on Airbnb, which was run by a YC founder whose startup had failed. It turned out to be a blessing. The house, a de facto college dorm for ambitious misfits, became the spark for his second startup
At the time, Tim didn’t know much about Silicon Valley, but interacting with the talented folk at the hacker house, he discovered what an incredible place it was. It had lots of entrepreneurs from around the world.
Arriving in the US, Tim decided against pursuing the image recognition business and instead started a new company with a co-founder he had met, Francisco Magdaleno.
The Early Hustle, Fluc Inc: The Pre-Uber Eats Era Food Delivery Idea
What started as a scrappy food delivery idea among housemates quickly turned into a fully functioning business. Tim built the front end and back end, and his co-founder developed the iOS app.
Before they knew it, they were pioneering one of the first food delivery apps just as DoorDash was launching in stealth mode as “Palo Alto Delivery.”
But signing up restaurants was painful. “They laughed at us,” Tim remembers, but he was very confident that their prototype was working well.
Inspired by Grubhub’s financial statements and business model, which primarily focused on sales and marketing, they added restaurants without permission and increased menu prices by 10% to 20%. The hack worked. Consumers wanted selection. That was the unlock.
The two cofounders continued coding remotely while sorting out their visa situation. They also brought in a third cofounder from the US, Adam Ahmad. When they launched Fluc, it gained popularity quickly since there were no other options in the market that added every restaurant.
The service exploded in Stanford, Palo Alto, and Mountain View. By 2014, Tim and Francisco were doing millions in top-line revenue. But the margins were brutal. “Food delivery is a horrendous margin business,” Tim admits.
Back in 2014-2015, the environment was particularly challenging for the on-demand economy. Legal uncertainties about whether drivers were contractors or employees spooked investors, making further fundraising difficult.
Google Steps In: A New Chapter
Amid rising legal complexity and capital challenges, Google entered the picture. The company wasn’t interested in the food delivery business, but they were very interested in the team. Google conducted interviews with the startup’s team members.
“It wasn’t a formal acquihire,” Tim notes. “They just wanted the people they thought were talented.” Tim and a few others joined Google, while some team members were not selected. What followed was a seven-year stint at one of the most prestigious technology companies.
At the time, Google was scaling a business called Google Express for North American folks. The company was not dissimilar to Instacart, where they were working with merchants to essentially scale the end state delivery.
The Google Years: Culture Shock and Product Execution
Going from startup life to Google was a seismic shift, and Tim picked up important lessons. He developed an understanding of how startups worked, as well as building and assembling things.
Completing design reviews, product reviews, and engineering reviews, while learning how to create a strong product, was also part of his experience.
Tim also learned organizational discipline and product execution, gaining valuable exposure to some of the world’s most brilliant minds. The melting pot of diversity and talent density impressed and inspired him.
“In startups, we worked from 7 a.m. to midnight. My first day at Google, people left at 4:30 p.m.,” Tim recalls. While the relaxed pace was jarring, Tim soaked up the best aspects of big tech. After a year in Ads, he moved to Google Brain, the elite AI research unit, which is now Google DeepMind.
It was 2017, before the AI boom, but Tim was hooked. “Being around the world’s best in AI was something you just couldn’t get anywhere else.” Although he had been exposed to recommendation systems inside ads in his logistics startup, deep learning was a new paradigm.
Here, Tim met his future co-founder, Chris Lattner, the creator of the legendary Swift programming language. Tens of millions of developers use this language today, and it drives most of the iOS ecosystem.
The Power of Hyper Networks
Tim emphasizes that the mentorship network he built at Google, particularly at Brain, became one of his most valuable assets. “That core group at Brain, many are now leading the next wave of AI startups like Character.ai, Adept, and others.”
What makes a hyper network? According to Tim, it’s not just about connections, but shared experience. “You work on hard problems with talented people. That trust and track record becomes the foundation for your next venture.”
The Next Chapter: Modular and AI’s Supercycle
Even while at Google back in 2016 to 2018, Tim could see that AI was going to have a massive impact on the world. Much of Google's internal technology was years ahead of the world, and he could see the possibilities.
Examining the product landscape, Tim noted that NVIDIA owned most of the compute that powers the world’s AI, even in its early stages in 2018-2019. At the time, Google had built its infrastructure called TPUs.
Tim had a background in product development, marketing, design, and sales, while Chris is a world-renowned engineer. “We asked ourselves—what if there was an open, universal abstraction layer for AI workloads?” Tim explains.
The vision was a platform where developers could define their model, budget, and latency needs without caring about what hardware ran it, essentially making AI compute truly portable and efficient.
This idea formed the foundation of Modular. It wasn’t a small bet; it was a deep-tech infrastructure play that would take years to build. But the potential to decentralize AI hardware dependency and optimize performance across environments made it one worth pursuing.
Business Model: Scaling with Compute
Modular’s revenue model is tightly tied to usage. “We scale with the amount of compute that flows through our platform,” Tim says. Similar to how Databricks charges based on compute units, Modular’s customers pay based on the volume of AI workloads run.
For enterprises with on-premise deployments, the model shifts to a per-GPU pricing structure. Modular integrates seamlessly with environments like Kubernetes, allowing large-scale AI training or inference across private infrastructure.
Additionally, Modular has embraced cloud partnerships as a key growth channel. Working with providers to embed Modular into their offerings allows the company to monetize through distribution partnerships.
Tim likens this approach to the early Microsoft-Intel alliance or Databricks' partnership with Azure. As he sees it, channel partnerships are an excellent way to get strong distribution. It’s an exciting area that they have also been utilizing.
A Different Approach to Fundraising
With over $130M raised, including backing from Google, Tim has gained a new perspective on how to raise capital effectively. His key takeaway? Skip the pitch deck and start with a memo, explaining why it was a significant opportunity for the world.
Storytelling is everything that Tim Davis was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (see it here) https://startupfundraising.com/pitch-guide where the most critical slides are highlighted.
“In our seed round, we didn’t use slides,” Tim explains. “We wrote a three-to-four-page memo explaining what made this opportunity and us as founders uniquely compelling.” The Amazon-style narrative was met with enthusiasm from investors, who appreciated the clarity and depth.
This written approach also enabled more meaningful conversations. “Instead of starting from scratch in meetings, investors came in prepared with thoughtful questions. We’d go straight to whiteboarding,” Tim says.
The contrast to his first fundraising experience, where pitch decks led to polite but empty rejections, was stark. The memo strategy wasn’t a one-off. Tim and Chris used it again for Modular’s $100M round.
They supplemented it with detailed papers on AI trends, compute economics, and developer growth. The result? Describing things in written form led to deeper discussions and faster alignment with the right investors.
Writing as a Cultural Backbone
Tim strongly encourages people to write their plans in a two-page memo, describing everything they think they can do, why they are uniquely positioned to do it, and why someone should give them the capital over all the competitors.
A two-page memo is more visionary and proves that the project deserves backing. It pushes founders to think deeply since they have only two pages to raise capital on. It also helps gain clarity on what they are building,
Modular’s documentation-first philosophy isn’t just for fundraising. Tim has embedded it into the company’s operating cadence. “We ask everyone to write down decisions using a simple problem-solving framework,” he shares.
The framework is composed of five core questions:
What problem are we solving?
Why is now the right time?
What does success look like?
What alternatives have been considered?
What’s the recommended course of action?
“It’s amazing how this clarity either makes a path obvious or sparks a productive debate,” Tim explains. Whether it’s a hiring decision, a product strategy, or a sales play, the same structure applies. This culture of structured thinking has become central to Modular’s execution engine.
Tim says that he just wants to see a document that briefly outlines the simple architecture. It’s a succinct framework to help drive organizational and product decision-making across companies.
On Mentorship, Networks, and Helping Others
Tim is deeply aware of how relationships have shaped his journey from crashing at a hacker house in his early days to meeting his Modular co-founder at Google Brain. Now, he tries to pay that forward.
“I came to the U.S. from Australia not knowing anyone,” Tim says. “People bet on me, and everything meaningful in Silicon Valley is about how you treat people and the relationships you build.” For founders navigating similar transitions, Tim is generous with his time.
“If I can help someone get a leg up, I try to. I know how hard it is to land in a new country and try to build something important.”
Final Reflections
Tim Davis’ story is one of navigation across continents, careers, and paradigms. From early missteps in chemical engineering to startup chaos and enterprise calm at Google, he’s assembled a unique blend of technical fluency, legal insight, and network leverage.
What ties it all together is a founder’s mindset: curious, bold, and constantly evolving. As Tim puts it, “You can’t always plan the path, but you can keep showing up, keep building, and make sure you’re surrounded by the best.”
After years at Google and a successful startup exit, Tim Davis wasn’t just interested in launching another venture; he aimed to reshape how AI workloads are deployed and scaled fundamentally.
Together with Chris Lattner, the legendary engineer behind the Swift programming language, Tim co-founded Modular, a company building what they see as a missing layer in the AI ecosystem: a hardware-agnostic infrastructure for machine learning workloads.
Listen https://alejandrocremades.com/tim-davis/ to the full podcast episode to know more, including:
Tim Davis's unconventional education and early passion for gaming laid the foundation for a bold entrepreneurial path across industries and continents.
His first startup experience taught him the hard lessons of equity, risk, and the limitations of the Australian fundraising ecosystem.
Moving to Silicon Valley transformed his trajectory, exposing him to global talent, scrappy startup culture, and ultimately Google’s scale.
Google Brain became a pivotal experience, where Tim gained deep exposure to AI and formed critical relationships that fueled his next venture.
With Modular, Tim is building a hardware-agnostic platform for AI compute, aiming to decentralize and optimize AI infrastructure.
His fundraising strategy, centered on narrative memos instead of pitch decks, has helped raise over $130M and foster deeper investor alignment.
Tim’s focus on structured thinking, writing culture, and mentorship reflects his belief in clarity, networks, and paying it forward.
