Julian Voss
FOUNDER & CEO, THESIS
I build companies that fix
broken systems.
Over the past twelve years, I've founded two companies,
exited one, and invested in fourteen others. I currently lead
Thesis, where we're rethinking how global supply chains
respond to volatility. Before that, I co-founded ClearRoute and
learned everything I know about scale the hard way.
Read my founder memo
View investments
ABOUT ME
I started my career in industrial
procurement, where I spent three years
watching manufacturers lose millions to
information delays. That frustration led me
to night-school engineering classes, a
messy first product built over weekends,
and eventually to ClearRoute — a logistics
platform we grew from a Stripe sandbox
account to a $40M Series B before selling
to Flexport in 2021. Today, I split my time
between Thesis and advising founders who
are earlier in the same journey.
How I got here
I grew up in Milwaukee, the son of a tool-and-die
shop owner. I didn't study computer science; I
studied panic. My first real education was
running customer support for a failing distributor
in 2012, where I realized that software's best use
is making complex physical worlds legible. I've
carried that lesson into every company since.
How I operate
I'm a full-time CEO and a part-time investor. At
Thesis, I work directly with our applied science
and GTM teams — I'm not a conference-circuit
founder. I also sit on two boards and make a
handful of angel investments each year in supply
chain, climate tech, and vertical SaaS. I believe
the best founders are anthropologists first, and I
try to stay close to the customer.
1 / 3
