Andy Volk

About Me

Hello, I’m Andy! I live in Los Angeles (when I’m not traveling). I love to build, and lead teams building, extremely ambitious, high-impact moonshots around emerging technologies and/or emerging markets. (“emerging everything” is my favorite area to work in)

Latest Projects

In April 2025, I launched Andy[x], my creative incubator (studio-meets-lab) for freely exploring a range of new ideas and projects, documenting my process, and sharing the results. (See the Andy[x] Prospectus for details, and Recent Posts for my latest work.)

Before that, in March 2025 I resigned from Google after 11 years, capping an epic run leading developer and startup engagement in several areas, including time spent on global engagement with AI and Android developer communities, and leading developer engagement in Africa. (My initial thoughts and a brief retrospective upon leaving Google.)

I’m also supporting the team at Itana (formerly Talent City) as a Founding Council member, since I love their vision of providing local ecosystems that enable startups to thrive, and am proud to help contribute to their mission.

Artifical Intelligence

It’s the buzzword of the moment! But I’ve been working on AI since I was 16 years old in a Caltech research lab, where I proposed using the then-novel concept of using neural networks to predict the behavior of ion channels… Sometimes great ideas need to wait for the right environment to grow and flourish in - such as cloud computing, cloud storage, GPUs, and transformers.

I’m very interested in applied AI, both in my work at Andy[x] (and at Google before that), and in exploring the deeper questions for humanity that AI raises. I’ll be publishing more of those explorations soon!

African Developers & Startups

For nearly a decade I led Google’s Ecosystem team for Sub-Saharan Africa, a fully distributed team working out of Google offices across the continent. My team was focused on reaching top startups and developers through scalable, high-impact programs, focused on all stages of the developer lifecycle, from developers writing their first lines of code, to entrepreneurs launching their first startups and apps, and on to the most successful developers on the African continent.

Because I believe in holistic impact, I ensured that beyond operating our own programs, my team focused on building first-ever maps of the current state and potential of Africa’s technology ecosystem. I piloted the idea internally, raised funds, and launched the Africa Developer Ecosystem 2021 report created with Accenture, the e-Conomy Africa 2020 report which Google created with the IFC, and the Africa Technology Ecosystem 2020 report with Accenture. Long-term outcomes of that work include defining metrics used for evaluating of Africa’s future economic potential from software development (Brookings Institution), GitHub’s scoping of Africa’s developer landscape (State of the Octoverse Report), and more.

Projects my team led include coordinating and managing scalable developer outreach and support programs across the region (including Google Developer Groups, Developer Student Clubs, and Google Developer Experts), working with startups and VCs through programs such as Google for Startups, increasing gender diversity in the professional software developer community with Women Techmakers, and representing Google’s range of developer platforms in Sub-Saharan Africa.

My team also launched the $3m Google for Startups Black Founders Fund Africa, in addition to launching Google’s first-ever game developer bootcamp in Africa to stimulate the growth of the indie game developer landscape across the continent.

Finally, I led the creation of and hiring for Google for Startups Accelerator Africa, a $3+ million program supporting African startups with equity-free support, mentorship, working space and access to expert advisers through an intensive three-month program held twice per year in Lagos, Nigeria. This program was Google for Startup’s first regional accelerator, and became the template for their transformation from a centralized model based in San Francisco, into a localized, regionally-based program operating in six continents.

Crypto & more: DAOs, NFTs, web3

I traded my first bitcoin in 2013, and since then my interest has continued to grow in crypto / blockchain technologies and how they impact people and products, so I’ve been investing and participating in cryptocurrencies, DAOs, web3 tooling, and NFTs.

I’ve enjoyed supporting DAOs who are purusing ambitious goals in both the digital and physical worlds, including LIT with their mission to “Create the world’s first cultural currency”, Rug Radio (working to create “the world’s first fully decentralized media platform”), WVRPS (AI-generated music tied to NFTs including transfer of music rights), SoundMint (working with music stems and generative remixes), ENS (creating a DAO-operated DNS for Ether addresses), LinksDAO (I love any team crazy enough to try and acquire a golf course with a DAO), and collecting NFTs by artists including the superb South African-born artist Faith47.

Angel & VC Fund Investments

As an angel investor in seed-stage technology startups focused on emerging markets and/or disruptive technologies, I’ve made 50+ angel investments and counting. Investments with quite notable growth so far (in many cases, I’ve been with them since their earliest rounds) include Alto, Doola, Klasha, Mood Health, Paga, Republic, and Termii.