Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum, Partner at IASV Seed Ventures, and a Silicon Valley investor, operator and community builder. He has spent two decades in tech: as an operator, an investor, a writer and a convener of rooms.
The thread through all of it is the same conviction. The leaders who shape an era are not the ones with the most resources. They are the ones with the best networks, and the best networks are the most generous ones. Murray built Open Future Forum to gather those people in Silicon Valley and give them a room worth showing up to.
C-level executive at Turing.com, where the team scaled the company to a $4B valuation. Earlier operator roles across enterprise SaaS and tech.
Partner at IASV Seed Ventures, an early-stage Silicon Valley investor backing AI and technology founders at the seed stage. Investor relations, LP development and SPV structuring.
Contributor to Forbes, Inc., Time, Entrepreneur, The Guardian, Business Insider and Mashable on AI, venture capital and enterprise technology. Author of Online Marketing: A User's Manual (Wiley).
Founder of Open Future Forum (2019). Previously built and ran a healthcare AI mastermind group, an AI Symposium at HanaHaus Palo Alto, the Doing Business Group (a weekly hot-seat format for funded startups), an AI Hawaii unconference, and the Exclusive Mansion Series. Spoken at AI4 and other enterprise-focused conferences on executive community and trust networks.
Open Future Forum has now run more than 100 events. Partners include Microsoft, Google, Meta, SAP, Khosla Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, BMO and Citizens Private Bank. Past speakers include Adam Cheyer, Peter Norvig, Rene Caissie, Max Sills, Katie McMahon, Maya Ackerman and Anubhav Bhatia.
See the full track record →Murray's philosophy of community is borrowed from Adam Grant's Give and Take: givers create more long-term value than takers or matchers, and a room full of them compounds. He built his career as a giver, sharing his network freely, writing for public benefit, making introductions without expectation, long before it made strategic sense.
That same approach runs through every Open Future Forum gathering. The unspoken rule in both rooms is to lead with what you can give. Murray identifies givers at Forum Events and invites the best of them personally into Forum Select.
The trade-off is real. A community built this way grows more slowly than one built on transactional networking. It also tends to be the one people stay in for years.
Murray writes weekly on Substack, where 50,000+ senior AI and tech leaders read his thinking on AI, venture, enterprise strategy and the architecture of executive networks. He also posts on X (1.4M+ followers) and LinkedIn.
He is open to speaking on:
Press and speaking inquiries via the press page.
Early-stage Silicon Valley investor backing AI and technology founders at the seed stage. Separate from Open Future Forum. Investor relations and LP development handled directly.
The community and events platform you are currently on. Two tiers: Forum Select (private, invitation-only) and Forum Events (open, public). More than 100 events since 2019. Venues include the Microsoft and SAP campuses, Fremont Hills Country Club and ROOH Palo Alto. Not an investment vehicle.
The two share a founder but operate independently. Open Future Forum is not an LP pipeline for IASV. IASV is not a sponsor of Open Future Forum. Members of one are sometimes also relevant to the other, but the conversations are kept separate.
The right path depends on what you are trying to do:
Yes. Murray is Partner at IASV Seed Ventures, an early-stage Silicon Valley investor backing AI and technology founders at the seed stage. IASV is separate from Open Future Forum.
Murray founded Open Future Forum in 2019 after years of building executive rooms in Silicon Valley and observing that the most senior conversations did not happen on conference stages. They happened in smaller rooms, off the record, with people who trusted each other. Open Future Forum exists to build more of those rooms in the AI era.
Murray was a C-level executive at Turing.com, where the team scaled the company to a $4B valuation. He has since moved on to venture capital and community building, but his operating experience informs how he runs both.
Murray writes weekly on his Substack at murraynewlands.substack.com (50,000+ subscribers). He has previously written for Forbes, Inc., Time, Entrepreneur, The Guardian, Business Insider and Mashable. He is the author of Online Marketing: A User's Manual (Wiley).
The most reliable path is to attend a Forum Event and meet Murray in person. Direct inbound for Forum Select inquiries goes through the apply page. Press and speaking inquiries go through the press page. Murray reviews every inquiry personally but cannot respond to every cold note.
Whether you want to attend a Forum Event or be considered for Forum Select, the first step is the same.