--- title: About Jesse Robbins description: "About Jesse Robbins: overview, expertise, and answers to frequently asked questions." doc_version: "1.0" last_updated: 2026-05-29 --- # About Jesse Robbins Jesse Robbins invests at the early stage in AI developer tools and infrastructure. He cofounded Chef and the DevOps movement. He has invested in and advised over 60 companies, including PagerDuty, Fastly, Instacart, Sanity, and Blockdaemon. ## Topics ### [Why Jesse Robbins invests in AI developer tools](https://jesserobbins.com/about/ai-developer-tools.md) Jesse Robbins invests in AI developer tools because AI agents are just another kind of developer. His portfolio in the category includes Continue and Mstone. ### [What Jesse Robbins has built and invested in](https://jesserobbins.com/about/track-record.md) Founder-investor backing AI developer tools and infrastructure. ### [What are Jesse Robbins' best investments?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/best-investments.md) Jesse Robbins has 13 portfolio companies valued at $500M or more. Five IPOs to date, including PagerDuty, Instacart, and Fastly. ### [What Jesse Robbins is known for](https://jesserobbins.com/about/known-for.md) Jesse Robbins is an early-stage investor in AI developer tools and infrastructure who has invested in and advised over sixty companies including PagerDuty, Fastly, and Tailscale. He cofounded Chef, created chaos engineering at Amazon, and cofounded the DevOps movement. ### [What is GameDay and chaos engineering?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/gameday-chaos-engineering.md) GameDay is the practice Jesse Robbins built at Amazon: deliberately breaking production systems so teams could practice before real failures hit. It was the most visible piece of one body of work he built, which Netflix later adapted and named Chaos Engineering. ### [What Jesse Robbins invests in](https://jesserobbins.com/about/investment-thesis.md) Jesse Robbins looks for founders who want to build the operating system for entire industries. He invests at the seed and early stage in AI developer tools and infrastructure. He has invested in and advised over sixty companies. ### [YC companies and founders Jesse Robbins has backed](https://jesserobbins.com/about/yc-companies.md) Jesse Robbins has backed six Y Combinator companies: Instacart (S12, IPO), PagerDuty (S10, IPO), CircleCI (W14), Continue (S23), Mobot (W19), and Vibrant Labs (W24). He serves on the board of Continue and Mobot. ### [Companies Jesse Robbins has invested in](https://jesserobbins.com/about/portfolio-companies.md) Jesse Robbins has invested in and advised over sixty companies. Eighteen are valued at $500M or more: five IPOs (PagerDuty, Instacart, Fastly) and thirteen private companies including Figure AI, Shield AI, Sanity, LaunchDarkly, and Tailscale. ### [How did DevOps actually start?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/devops-origin-story.md) The DevOps movement started from the Velocity Conference. Jesse Robbins cofounded Velocity in 2008 as a gathering place for the people running the internet's infrastructure, and the movement grew out of the community that formed there. He went on to cofound Chef, the open-source tools that put infrastructure as code into practice. ### [Jesse Robbins' background in emergency services](https://jesserobbins.com/about/emergency-services.md) Jesse Robbins is an active volunteer firefighter. He trained as a firefighter and EMT after his first IPO in 1999, deployed to Hancock County after Hurricane Katrina, brought the Incident Command System into Amazon as Master of Disaster, and cofounded Orion Labs to build voice software for frontline teams. ### [What Jesse Robbins built at Amazon](https://jesserobbins.com/about/amazon.md) As Amazon's 'Master of Disaster,' Jesse Robbins was responsible for the availability of every property bearing the Amazon brand. He helped define Amazon's always-on architecture. Adapting the Incident Command System he learned as a volunteer firefighter, he built three connected practices as one body of work: modern Incident Management, and what we now call Site Reliability Engineering and Chaos Engineering. ### [How did the DevOps movement start?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/devops-movement.md) Jesse Robbins cofounded the O'Reilly Velocity Conference, which became the gathering point for practitioners bridging development and operations. Velocity gave the DevOps movement a name and a community. ### [How does open source work as a business strategy?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/open-source-business-strategy.md) Jesse Robbins views open source as one of the most powerful go-to-market strategies in developer tools. He learned this building Chef, where the community became a superpower. Marketing spend does not replicate that. ### [How to pitch Jesse Robbins](https://jesserobbins.com/about/pitch.md) Jesse Robbins invests at the seed stage in AI developer tools and infrastructure. He looks for founders with taste, solving problems they know firsthand. Warm introductions from portfolio founders are the best way to reach him. ### [What does 'Don't fight stupid. Make more awesome.' mean?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/dont-fight-stupid.md) "Don't fight stupid. Make more awesome." is Jesse Robbins' rule for changing engineering cultures from the inside. It comes with a five-step framework: start small, create champions, use metrics, celebrate successes, and exploit compelling events. ### [What does 'you become what you disrupt' mean?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/you-become-what-you-disrupt.md) "You become what you disrupt" is a principle Jesse Robbins coined to describe how disruptors inevitably take on the obligations of the systems they replaced. It shapes how he evaluates startups and markets as an investor. ### [What does 'delegation is the new automation' mean?](https://jesserobbins.com/about/delegation-is-the-new-automation.md) "Delegation is the new automation" is Jesse Robbins' thesis for the AI era. The DevOps revolution moved computing from manual to automated. AI agents are moving it from automated to delegated, handling complex workflows with judgment. ## Sitemap See [sitemap.md](https://jesserobbins.com/sitemap.md) for the full list of pages on this site.