Samuel Beskind is an associate at Floodgate and chief of staff to co-founder Mike Maples Jr. He holds degrees in management science and engineering from Stanford and advanced energy systems from the Colorado School of Mines, and hosts a podcast called Built for Earth on hard tech climate solutions. Before Floodgate he worked at Incite, sourcing climate and social impact startups. Floodgate, a pre-seed and seed fund based in Menlo Park, backed Hadrian, the automated precision manufacturer now valued near $8 billion, along with Applied Intuition and Merlin Labs.