Josh Latin

Angel investor & builder — Santa Monica & Montecito, CA

I write early checks into pre-seed and seed companies in robotics, manufacturing, and everything else on my research list. The rest of my time goes to building software and working with founders and investment teams.

STN 46221 · SANTA MONICA SWELL 3.2 FT WATER 64°F 34.02°N 118.49°W STATUS OFFSHORE
/investing5m down

Angel investments

Personal checks at pre-seed and seed, with larger syndicated allocations case by case.

Anatar SEED American-made textiles, composites, and soft goods engineered for aerospace and defense.
Robo SEED Affordable, fast-to-deploy robots for the manual work traditional automation never solved. Actively deployed in commercial facilities today.
Transcend Mechanics SEED Generative design for compliant mechanisms, making robotic hardware radically cheaper — starting with grippers. Read the deep dive ↓
FOUNDERS

Thinking about raising? I'll help you tighten your narrative and get in front of the right people. I reply to everything that isn't spam.

josh@joshlatin.com

/building12m down

Things I've built

Convergence 2026 · YEAR 1 OF 50 A lifelong, AI-powered research project tracing the evolution of consciousness — how ideas go from "that's insane" to "that was obvious," and what that predicts about where the world goes next.
What's next 2026 · IN PROGRESS Diving deep across robotics, manufacturing, and the operating businesses both are about to reshape, to figure out what I'll build next.
HEAT 2022–2025 · SUNSET A marketplace for human motion data, backed by A16Z Speedrun. Born too early to power the humanoid robotics revolution, too late for Hollywood mocap.
Signature Resolution 2019–2022 · EXIT Led business development, recruitment, and special projects at the fastest-growing private mediation firm in the country.
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Writing

The Factory is the Moat 2026 Reshoring, reindustrialization, and compounding data advantage. Why the durable moats are migrating from software to the physical layer, and what HEAT taught me about it.
Transcend Mechanics is Building a Matter Compiler 2026 A deep dive on compliant mechanisms, the design bottleneck in hardware, and why I invested.
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Areas of research

space defense robotics ai infrastructure automated manufacturing chemical manufacturing energy subsea economy financial infrastructure brain-computer interfaces critical minerals longevity bio
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2026 reading

The Conscious Universe
Dean Radin
IN PROGRESS
Outwitting the Devil
Napoleon Hill
IN PROGRESS
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Carl Jung
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Carl Jung
A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung
Robert H. Hopcke
Against Method
Paul Feyerabend
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn
Something Deeply Hidden
Sean Carroll
Magicians of the Gods
Graham Hancock
One Nation Under Blackmail
Whitney Webb
/offline44m · seafloor

Off the clock

contemporary art · ancient civilizations · consciousness · philosophy · psychology · longevity · yoga · hiking · padel · sailing · scuba · techno · good stand-up