Neal Bloom is an engineer who became a founder, an operator, and an investor — and never stopped doing the same thing at each stop: connecting the right people to the right opportunity at the right moment.
He started in aerospace, operating large-scale systems and routing domain experts during mission-critical events at a Space Shuttle Action Center. He co-founded Portfolium, a talent marketplace acquired by Instructure, and scaled Hired from $3M to $70M in revenue. Along the way he built the connective tissue of San Diego's tech ecosystem — founder dinners, Tacos & Tech, build days, and a decade-plus of gatherings.
That work became Interlock Capital, which proved the operator-LP model, and then Rising Tide Partners — a fund designed to lead the earliest rounds in founders he's known for years.
His core skill is the through-line of the whole career: designing systems that route people, context, and opportunity with precision. Capital is just the newest tool for doing it.