Ryan Mendoza came to venture capital through hands-on engineering work, starting as an electrical engineer on space flight vehicles before becoming the third employee and a co-inventor at Graphene Frontiers, then leading university tech spinouts at PCI Ventures where he got early board experience. That background shapes how he invests today: he looks for startups with provable ROI and real operational value rather than just interesting technology, and he sees the investor's board role as asking hard questions and connecting founders to the right resources rather than pushing an agenda.