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Deon Nicholas

Founder

Founder at Forethought Technologies, Inc.

San Mateo, California, United States

FoundedForethought Technologies, Inc.

Find your path to Deon

693 people in our graph share verified history with Deon — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.

Mike SpeiserunlockedDeon: together at Pure Storage (2015–2017)
×7Deon: together at Pure Storage
×3Deon: together at Leaders In Tech
Deon: together at Dropbox

About

Deon Nicholas is Co-Founder and CEO of Espa Labs, an AI-native executive assistant company. He previously co-founded and served as Chairman of Forethought, which was acquired by Zendesk, and has worked at Meta, Palantir, Dropbox, and Pure Storage. An angel investor in over 30 companies including Anthropic, Cognition, and Bluesky, Nicholas studied AI and mathematics at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and the University of Waterloo.

Founder at Forethought Technologies, Inc.

Intro paths

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In turn, Deon can intro founders to Forethought Technologies, Inc.'s investors below.

Forethought Technologies, Inc.'s investors · 11

8VCAustin · $100K – $50M checks · since 2018Blue Cloud VenturesNew York · $5M – $30M checks · since 2018Cleo CapitalNew York · $100K – $1M checks · since 2018Frontline VenturesSan Francisco · $540K – $3.2M checks · since 2018Geodesic CapitalFoster City · since 2018Inspired CapitalNew York · $500K – $20M checks · since 2018K9 VenturesPalo Alto · $250K – $750K checks · since 2018New Enterprise Associates (NEA)Menlo Park · $200K – $40M checks · since 2018Operator CollectivePalo Alto · $500K – $1.5M checks · since 2018Village GlobalCovina · $100K – $500K checks · since 2018Worklife VenturesWalnut · $500K – $2M checks · since 2018

Co-founders at Forethought Technologies, Inc.

SGSami Ghoche
Sami GhocheFounder

Experience

  1. Espa LabsCo-Founder & CEOcurrent2026 — presentSan Francisco, CA
  2. ZendeskStrategic AI Advisorcurrent2026 — presentSan Francisco, California, United States
  3. ForethoughtCo-Founder & Chairman2024 — 2026San Francisco Bay Area
  4. ForethoughtCEO & Co-Founder2017 — 2024San Francisco Bay Area
  5. Pure StorageSoftware Engineer2015 — 2017Mountain View, California
  6. DropboxSoftware Engineer2015San Francisco, CA
  7. Palantir TechnologiesFull Stack Software Engineer Intern2014Palo Alto, CA
  8. FacebookSoftware Engineering Intern2013Menlo Park, CA
  9. Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii)Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence (RLAI) Intern2011Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
  10. Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii)Research & Development Intern2010Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Skills & more

Teamwork21Creative Problem Solving6Public Speaking11AlgorithmsC++28Software Engineering27Databases13Data Structures13Java10Web Applications9Research8Python12
+12 moreComputer ScienceSocial MediaBig DataGame ProgrammingTechnical WritingCSSArtificial IntelligenceDistributed SystemsCascading Style Sheets (CSS)Python (Programming Language)Machine LearningSoftware Development

Languages English · French

  • ICPCID — ICPC - International Collegiate Programming Contest

From Deon's professional profile.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Deon Nicholas?
Deon Nicholas is Co-Founder and CEO of Espa Labs, an AI-native executive assistant company. He previously co-founded and served as Chairman of Forethought, which was acquired by Zendesk, and has worked at Meta, Palantir, Dropbox, and Pure Storage. An angel investor in over 30 companies including Anthropic, Cognition, and Bluesky, Nicholas studied AI and mathematics at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and the University of Waterloo.
Where does Deon Nicholas work?
Deon Nicholas is Founder of Forethought Technologies, Inc..
What companies did Deon Nicholas found?
Deon Nicholas founded Forethought Technologies, Inc..
Where did Deon Nicholas go to school?
Deon Nicholas studied at University of Waterloo (Bachelor of Mathematics (with Distinction), Honours Computer Science and Combinatorics/Optimization); Leaders In Tech (Leaders in Tech Fellow).

Founder mafias

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