Sector: Disruptive Tech, Satellite Propulsion, Aerospace, Space Travel							

Lead Partner: Stewart Alsop, Gilman Louie							

Company Website: www.phasefour.io 							

Phase Four is a plasma propulsion company serving the fast-growing  CubeSat and SmallSat markets. P4 was founded in 2015 with the mission of  providing plasma propulsion as an enabling technology for earth  observation, big data and communications. The company was initially  funded by a contract from DARPA, before Alsop Louie Partners &  Wolverine Angels provided a seed financing for P4 to commercialize its  thruster technology.

Stewart is a Partner. He spent the first 20 years of his professional career as a business journalist and commentator. It did not start well: he earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1975, but had to stay the summer to complete his credits. Then he couldn’t find a job, so he went to bartending school. But bars weren’t hiring. He persisted and, from 1975 to 1996, had a series of jobs in which he learned how to be a business editor. This included becoming Executive Editor of Inc. Magazine, where he became fascinated by both entrepreneurship and personal computers, and as the third editor of InfoWorld, the job that got him moved from Boston to Silicon Valley in 1983.

In 1985, having been fired from two jobs, he started his own business, a newsletter called P.C. Letter, which became widely read in the executive ranks of the major hardware and software companies that formed and grew the personal computer industry. He also started two conferences, Agenda and Demo, and published the “Social Register to the PC Industry.”

In 1996, Stewart changed careers to become a venture capitalist, joining New Enterprise Associates, a top-tier venture capital firm with a long track record of success in investing in early stage and growth companies. He was a general partner with New Enterprise Associates and led that firm’s investments in companies such as TiVo, Portola Communications (sold to Netscape), Netcentives, Glu Mobile, and Xfire. From 1996 to 2003, he wrote Alsop On InfoTech for Fortune.

Stewart left NEA in 2005 and invited Gilman Louie to become his partner in a new venture capital firm designed to put to use everything the partners had learned about entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation over the prior 25 years. From 2005-2013, Stewart was a member of the board of directors of Sonos, Inc., which has become a thought leader in the world of digital audio and the digital living room.

Stewart Alsop

Partner

2021 Tech Titans: The Cybersecurity Specialists

An Open Letter to the Secretary of Defense Nominee

Gilman Louie has over 30 years of national security and investment experience. He served as an early CEO of In-Q-Tel—the pioneering technology investment firm funded by the CIA—from 1999-2006, as an expert to the Defense Innovation Board from 2016-2020, and as a Commissioner on the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence from 2018-2021.

In addition to being a co-founder and partner at Alsop Louie Partners, he is also a co-founder and CEO of the America’s Frontier Fund.   Gilman is currently the Chairman of the National Intelligence University, Chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and of the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He serves on numerous commercial and advisory boards, including Maxar Technologies, Niantic, and Aerospike. He has also served on the Diversity Senior Advisory Panel for the Intelligence Community and as a member of the Technology Advisory Group to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Gilman is the recipient of the CIA Agency Seal Medallion (2004), CIA Director’s Award (2006), Agency Seal Medallion (2006), and Director of National Intelligence Medallion (2008). Gilman received his B.S. in Business Administration from San Francisco State University where he graduated magna cum laude.

Phase Four

Disruptive Tech, Satellite Propulsion, Aerospace, Space Travel

Company Overview

Related Articles