Jamie Montgomery's path runs from the Pentagon during the Reagan era to building his own Los Angeles firm in 1986, and along the way he started running a fire-extinguisher business as a teenager and later built the Montgomery Summit into an invite-only gathering he calls "impactful 48 hours." He judges founders with what he calls the turkey sandwich test—whether you'd want to spend real time with them—joins sales calls to help portfolio companies win customers directly, argues AI returns will come more from workflow-based applications than infrastructure alone, and has pushed to establish Los Angeles as a serious tech hub built on design talent and engineering density.