Joseph Malchow is an investor at Hanover Technology Investment Management and cofounder of Publir. He is an occasional contributor to The Wall Street Journal. ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper profiled him in 2008. In 2012 he was named to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list. He holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Stanford University. Originally from New Jersey, he is based in Menlo Park, California.
Joe has been an active investor since 2013, originating equity investments in private technology companies in the Palo Alto-San Francisco corridor and in selected areas around the country. He manages the private investment fund HNVR, which he founded in 2018.
Joe’s work focuses on locating and supporting highly technical founders in the earliest stages of company growth. He has consistently provided the first investment capital to transformative companies that go on to pioneer novel markets and outpace hidebound incumbents. In advising companies, he focuses on systems-thinking, company processes and governance, and strategic relationships with key people and organizations. In recent years, he has focused on new technologies in the devtools, security, energy, and enterprise computing spaces.
Outside of his software and internet investing, Joe has been a leader in next-generation energy companies. Since 2020, he has served on the board of Enphase (Nasdaq: ENPH), a global energy technology company pioneering autonomous microgrids, along with advanced battery and solar technologies, and a member of the S&P 500 Index. He was also a cofounder and sponsor of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company which brought the silicon battery company Enovix (Nasdaq: ENVX) to the public markets –– marking the world’s first major advancement in Li-Ion energy density in decades. Additionally, he serves on the board of directors of Archaea (NYSE: LFG), the pioneer in high-precision renewable natural gas production from landfills and dairies.
Earlier in his career, he was a cofounder of Publir. Today, Publir represents the widest-reaching political digital advertising exchange in the U.S. Its platform is trusted by publications from The Atlantic to RealClearPolitics, reaching a total of more than 40 million Americans and many more globally. Publir ads and media properties move minds and markets every day, and represent one of the world’s top-ranked consortia by traffic.
In 2010 Joe created the Next Generation Fellows Program at the Hoover Institution at Stanford; in that capacity, he hosted discussions with prominent economists, politicians, and historians.
In 2008 he served as Robert L. Bartley Fellow with The Wall Street Journal, writing extensively on economics and business. His writing has been published in, among others, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Far Eastern Economic Review, and the publications of the Manhattan Institute.
Between 2004 and 2008 he drove one of the most innovative reform campaigns in higher education. This extended campaign eventually placed four independent trustees on the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, the first Ivy League institution to benefit from such independent directors. He is also the creator of Dartblog, the most widely read publication in the Ivy League, and is part of the team behind the pioneering Power Line blog, which is widely read in Washington.
In 1998 Joe founded JetWare, which created the first mobile applications for students and teachers. JetWare shipped tens of thousands of copies of its software products for the then-nascent Palm OS. The New York Times covered JetWare in 1999.
Non-profit charities Joe has been involved in include Teneo Network, Inc., a national professional organization; the National Civic Art Society in Washington, D.C.; The Federalist Society; Lincoln Network in San Francisco, Calif., and the International Affairs Network at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford.
Originally from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, Joe is a 2008 graduate of Dartmouth College, where he was a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar. He studied at the Law and Business schools of Stanford University, receiving a J.D. in 2013. He lives in Menlo Park, California.