THOMAS THURSTON

Where are value and impact migrating, and how can we create more of both?

Using data science to understand how value and impact move through the world.

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01 / ABOUT

The world runs on unexpected dependencies.

We naturally focus on what’s visible. Increasingly, the forces that determine an outcome are somewhere else: in infrastructure, incentives, institutions or supply chains. The extraordinary often depends on the ordinary.

The farther apart cause and effect become, the easier they are to miss.

Understanding those relationships is the first step. The goal isn’t simply to predict the future. It’s to better understand the forces that create it.

Thomas Thurston studies how value and impact move through the world. His work uses data science to explore the unexpected dependencies that shape business, technology and society.

He began at Intel, trying to understand why some new businesses survive while others do not. What he found was that the answer is often outside the companies themselves, in the structure of the markets around them. That observation led to a research collaboration with Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School, where he helped develop quantitative methods for understanding disruptive innovation. It has guided his work ever since.

Thomas is Chief Technologist at Ducera Partners, an investment bank that has advised on more than $900 billion in transactions. He runs Growth Science Ventures, where his team manages corporate venture capital funds for S&P 500 companies. He is also a Partner at WR Hambrecht + Co., whose venture capital history includes early financings of Apple, Amazon, Google and Nvidia.

Thomas Thurston studies how value and impact move through the world. His work uses data science to explore the unexpected dependencies that shape markets, technology and society. It spans investing, innovation, philanthropy and public policy, but the underlying question has remained the same: what are the hidden forces that determine how complex systems actually behave?

He began at Intel, trying to understand why some new businesses survive while others don’t. He built one of the first large scale datasets tracking what actually happened to emerging companies. What he found was that the answer often lies outside the companies themselves, in the structure of the markets around them. That observation led to a research collaboration with Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School, where he helped develop quantitative methods for understanding disruptive innovation.

Today, Thomas is Chief Technologist at Ducera Partners, where he applies this work to mergers, acquisitions and corporate strategy. He runs Growth Science Ventures, where his team manages corporate venture capital funds for S&P 500 companies while conducting foundational data science research into the forces that shape markets, technology and society. He is also a Partner at WR Hambrecht + Co., whose venture capital history includes early financings of Apple, Amazon, Google and Nvidia.

Over the years, his work has ranged from the materials that make technologies possible to the institutions that shape societies. Few of those subjects have much in common on the surface. The underlying mechanisms are often remarkably similar. Again and again, the forces that shape an outcome turn out to lie somewhere unexpected. The patterns are there, whether we notice them or not.

Thomas holds a JD, MBA and BA, and served as a Fellow at Harvard Business School. At Intel, he helped launch a high performance computing business that was later acquired. He has lived in Australia, Bolivia, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Nepal, New Zealand, Panama and the United States.

Thomas Thurston studies how value and impact move through the world. Using data science, he explores the unexpected dependencies that shape technology, markets and society. He is Chief Technologist at Ducera Partners, runs Growth Science Ventures and is a Partner at WR Hambrecht + Co.

02 / ROLES

Ducera Partners

Growth Science Ventures

WR Hambrecht & Co

Chief Technologist

Founder, Managing Partner

Partner, Chief Technology Officer

03 / FEATURED IN

04 / CONTACT