Zach Frankel: Solo Investor Behind Ramp, Cognition First Checks

Zach Frankel wrote the first checks into Ramp, Cognition, and Applied Compute. The Information's Jemima McEvoy has published what she calls the "first-ever profile" of the solo investor.

On X, McEvoy framed the piece: "Who is Zach Frankel? The question has been circulating around X over the past few days. I wrote the first-ever profile of the secretive Ramp and Cognition investor, who is considered a cofounder of multiple of his portfolio companies."

Techmeme's one-line summary describes him as "a secretive and unusually hands-on solo investor who wrote the first checks to startups like Ramp, Cognition, and Applied Compute." The reporting values his portfolio companies at more than $185 billion in total, and cites a $70 million dividend from Juul earlier in his career.

The hands-on part is where the piece gets strange. Frankel edits college essays for the siblings of founders. His private jet is nicknamed "Air Frankel" and sometimes carries his portfolio founders. He has recruited much of Team USA from the International Olympiad in Informatics.

Frankel himself is the open question. He was Harvard's valedictorian, trained as a physicist, and a Rhodes Scholar. He passed through Goldman Sachs and Founders Fund, where he interned for six months before going solo in his 20s. The profile does not fully explain the leap between those two states.