Joseph Malchow is an investor at Hanover Technology Investment Management. 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 venture capital fund Hanover, 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 data infrastructure, devtools, AI and simulation, energy, and enterprise automation.
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 also serves on the board of silicon battery leader Enovix (Nasdaq: ENVX), which marks the world’s first major advancement in Li-Ion energy density in decades by bringing semiconductor manufacturing techniques to batteries. Additionally, he was an investor in and served on the board of directors of Archaea (NYSE: LFG), the pioneer in high-precision renewable natural gas processing technologies, from its public listing through to its acquisition by energy giant BP.
Earlier in his career, he worked on mixed-signal microcontrollers at semiconductor designer and manufacturer Cypress Semiconductor.
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.