TheBridge profile: Marvin Ammori

Name: Marvin Ammori

Current city: Michigan/NYC

Current job: Head of Policy, Protocol Labs

Past job: General Counsel, Virgin Hyperloop One

Q. Favorite spot for a coffee meeting? Atrium of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Q. Describe how a skill you learned in a previous job helped you in your current job.  Through my work to define and preserve net neutrality, I learned that internet regulation is a do-or-die necessity for the health and future potential of the web. I also learned firsthand how over-regulation can throttle innovative technologies in their infancy. It’s a delicate balance⁠ — companies need a roadmap — but it needs to be open and apply to every company equally.

I also learned that being deeply substantive and unusually direct and true to my word generally has been more useful than many in D.C. might assume.

Q. A skill you have carried throughout your career that has always proved to be valuable? My parents are Iraqi immigrants. My dad never went to high school. When my parents moved to the U.S., my dad opened a liquor store in downtown Detroit. Everyone came through those doors — from the mayor to auto factory workers. From age five until I moved to Boston for law school, I spent summers working at the store. Chatting with/ringing up thousands of people from all walks of life taught me how to empathize with people and see the amazing talent, passions, and histories of people who are often overlooked. That belief in human ability is one thing that drew me to the internet — here was a platform that empowered anyone to showcase their talent and creativity.

Q. Job advice in three words? Find great mentors.

Q. How are you (or your company, org, nonprofit) currently bridging the gap between innovation and regulation? Our mission at Protocol Labs is to improve humanity’s most important technology, the internet. It’s a pretty audacious goal. The internet connects people and places like never before. It breaks down physical and geographic barriers. It lets anyone with a connection scale her business — be it on a laptop or a smartphone. It’s our generation’s greatest gift to humanity.  

As the internet has evolved from static pages on dial-up, to interactive video and collaboration everywhere, some of the internet’s underpinnings need an upgrade. We’re working on how data is addressed and stored and shared, to improve the reliability of and to drive down the costs of future, data-hungry applications such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

Q. What can innovators learn from policymakers? The best policymakers are incredible communicators. Sometimes innovators are bad at explaining what their innovations are and how they may improve lives — instead invoking buzzwords and hand-waving. Innovators should focus on providing concrete, simple-to-understand examples of how their technologies can improve people’s lives. When you can show the “how,” it’s easier to understand the “why.”

Q. What can policymakers learn from innovators? Transformative technologies and concepts such as blockchain and the decentralized web raise new policy questions and challenges, but our policies should encourage experimentation with socially beneficial uses. Some policymakers oppose new technologies if they see any risks at all, but loss aversion is a bad long-term strategy. We need policymakers to see potential, not just downside, when they look at powerful innovations.

Q. What’s one piece of advice you are still trying to master? Be humble, be brave, be grateful.

Q. Living person you admire? Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler, who shaped how I think about information, property, and networks.

Q. Favorite under the radar company? Other than Protocol Labs, Zipline. Based in San Francisco, Zipline is the leading autonomous drone delivery company in the world, with incredible technology and operations, it’s now being used to deliver blood supplies across difficult terrain, saving thousands of lives in medical emergencies across Africa and India.

Q. Favorite app? Superhuman. It’s an email management app that I’d say makes me at least 10% more productive. I’m usually at inbox zero at the end of the week — that’s a big win in my book.

Q. How often do you work from home? Protocol Labs is a fully remote company. It’s part of what makes this company really special. So I work from home all the time — wherever I happen to be. As a distributed team, we hire from and work with people around the world, with different experiences and perspectives and passions. But the unifying factor is that every single Labber is incredibly bright and mission-driven — particularly important since our meetings take place on Zoom from our kitchen tables.

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