John Murphy

John Murphy is the Co-Founder and a Managing Partner of Hyperplane Venture Capital, a Boston-based early-stage firm that backs founders building machine intelligence and data companies. He came to venture capital by an unusual route: born into a multi-generation accounting family, he earned a BS in Accounting and a BA in Philosophy from Boston College in 2007, followed by an MS in Accounting from BC in 2009, and became a CPA. He began his career in public accounting at Grant Thornton before breaking with the family tradition.

In 2011, Murphy moved into venture capital, joining PJC, an early-stage VC firm in Boston. While at PJC he met Vivjan Myrto, and in 2014–2015 the two co-founded Hyperplane Venture Capital. The firm was built on the conviction that seed capital is the foundational layer in building enduring companies, and it focuses on applied AI and data companies across enterprise and industrial domains.

Murphy frames entrepreneurship as both "art and science," a worldview he traces to a lifelong relationship with music — discovering vinyl with his father, teaching himself guitar at 13, and crediting his early fascination with MP3 compression technology as a catalyst for his interest in technology. He uses the analogy of musical genres and the mix of formally trained and self-taught musicians to argue that exceptional founders come from diverse backgrounds rather than a single prototype.

He compares AI's current moment to the internet in terms of raw innovation potential, but to the cloud in terms of economic impact — and he stresses patience and marathon-like endurance as the qualities that matter most in early-stage investing.

• Invests in applied AI, machine intelligence, and data-driven software, including enterprise software, data services, robotics, and deep tech / hardware.
• Stage focus on pre-seed and seed through Series A, writing checks of $250K–$3.0M (sweet spot around $1.5M), and willing to lead rounds.
• Backs technically intense teams — Hyperplane is known for funding founders attacking physical-world problems such as wastewater epidemiology, precision agriculture, and industrial robotics.
• On philosophy, in his own words: "patience is the most underrated trait an early stage investor can bring," and he describes startups as a blend of "art and science."
• Believes great founders come from varied, non-prototypical backgrounds, mirroring his own path from accounting and music into venture.