Welcome to Praxis, Alyssa Tamboura.

Praxis is a lead pre-seed/seed investor in manufacturing and software startups. This post shares a letter from Alyssa Tamboura, a '24 Yale Law J.D. who recently joined Praxis as Chief of Staff.

I am excited to share that Alyssa Tamboura has joined Praxis as Chief of Staff. Alyssa’s background, temperament, and reputation are perfectly aligned with Praxis, its thesis, and the workplace standards of its management company.  We are blessed to work with and learn from her at Praxis.

Alyssa will complete her J.D. at Yale Law School in May 2024. She previously worked as a Summer Associate at Cooley LLP in Palo Alto (2022-2023), at Covington and Burling LLP in San Francisco (2021), and at Stanford Medical School. In the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Clinic at Yale Law School, she works with teams of students and faculty to provide legal counsel to for-profit and nonprofit entrepreneurs on transactional matters that emerge from starting, managing, and growing their businesses. Hear directly from her below.

Greetings! I’m Alyssa Tamboura, Chief of Staff for Praxis Ventures.

At Praxis Ventures, we start our weekly team meetings on Monday morning with the phrase focus wins. 

As a law student, I am acutely aware of the returns from focus. Understanding the nuances of a legal issue with focus can bring well-received praise from professors in class or on an exam. Perfecting every detail of legal documents or memos keeps clinic (or Big Law) clients happy. In law, there is an abundance of opportunity for “wins”. While building the skills and knowledge to become an excellent attorney takes time and dedication, the returns on focusing can be fairly immediate in law school. 

Praxis Ventures has a different philosophy of focus wins.

With Praxis, it is less about concentrating on achieving short-term gains or fleeting moments of satisfaction. Rather it is about an intentional mapping of and building on a series of long-term, repeatable, and exceptional “small” decisions for continuous improvement and personal growth. Focus does not require saying yes and pressing forward with action. However, it does require discerning when to say no and when to pause to think. 

At Yale Law School, I study and learn from world-class faculty how to think like a lawyer. I study and learn the valuable skill of absorbing and understanding all of the facts, deconstructing them, and rebuilding them into a favorable outcome for all that’s defensible through logic and theory. At Praxis Ventures, I study and learn from exceptional entrepreneurs how to think differently. I am learning how to think like an owner. I have a unique opportunity with Praxis to support founders and entrepreneurs as they develop new concepts, bring them to life, and embark on a new journey: learn and prepare to become an owner. 

As the Chief of Staff at Praxis, I work closely with the General Partner and Principal on all prospective investments, portfolio companies, and firm operations. My first project as Chief of Staff is to work closely with our Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) and my Yale Law classmate Darnell Epps on his early-stage startup. In conjunction with his legal studies, during 2022/2023, Darnell earned diplomas and certificates in advanced manufacturing and became a fully skilled machinist. I now have the privilege of joining an exceptional team of individuals, like Darnell, who view excellence as their everyday standard. 

I am absolutely thrilled to move into this new role and join the Praxis team as Chief of Staff.