Greg Sands was the first non-engineering hire at Netscape where he wrote the original business plan, coined the name Netscape, and built the SuiteSpot server business from $0 to roughly $140-150M in revenue, giving him unusually deep hands-on product and go-to-market experience for a VC. He spun out from Sutter Hill Ventures in an unconventional way by hand-negotiating a two-page agreement that allowed him to take portions of stakes in companies he'd led as seed corn to start Costanoa, and he invests with a product-manager-like approach where he personally goes on sales calls with founders to dissect customer needs and product-market fit before scaling go-to-market.

• Active investment thesis focused on AI-native business applications and the potential for large language models to reinvent business processes. He highlights specific opportunities in tools that help developers with fine-tuning, such as his firm's investment in Open Pipe, and notes the ability of these models to synthesize various forms of media to transform vertical industries.
• Dedication to a service-oriented partnership model that prioritizes the founder experience above all else. He frequently expresses gratitude to the entrepreneurs he works with and emphasizes that investors should act as true partners who do not make easy tasks difficult, citing his firm's operational support framework as a key differentiator for mission-driven teams like Vannevar Labs.
• Focus on the nuances of leadership, mental toughness, and organizational management. He regularly shares advice on the importance of accountability and discipline, referencing insights from football coaches like Steve Sarkisian and acknowledging that managing people is often more challenging than building the product itself.
• Critical eye for user experience and frustration with friction in consumer technology. He has publicly critiqued poor product design choices, such as intrusive sports notifications on Apple TV that he never signed up for and the inability of autocorrect to understand context, signaling a strong preference for intuitive and thoughtful product design.
• Appreciation for corporate satire and observational humor. He frequently shares single-panel cartoons that poke fun at the absurdities of modern office life, such as the redundancy of email unsubscribe confirmations or the disconnect between online hysteria and real-life stability.
• Personal passion for football, with specific support for the Minnesota Vikings. He follows player narratives closely, such as the journey of Joshua Dobbs, and often uses sports analogies to describe the resilience and readiness required in the business world.
• Respect for military service and national sacrifice. He takes time to acknowledge veterans and service members on holidays and connects these values to his professional work by highlighting portfolio companies that are dedicated to supporting national security missions.