Operations

How I Got to Now: Andrew Beebe

Andrew Beebe | 03/04/2025

The road to progress is rarely a sprint. It is more often a series of measured steps—forward motion, setbacks, and recalibration. Few know this better than Obvious Managing Director Andrew Beebe, whose career has been defined by persistence, pivots, and the compounding power of incremental progress.

Beebe learned the value of standing firm in his beliefs early on. Raised in New York City by parents who prized purpose over convention, he grew up witnessing his father, Walter, leave a corporate law career to found the New York Open Center, a non-profit holistic learning center. His mother, Robin, pursued her own path, leading spiritual tours around the world and farming avocados in Ojai, California. Their lives taught him that meaningful change often happens outside the mainstream.

That lesson came into focus during his senior year at Dartmouth, where he served as student body president. Inspired by a summer taking women’s studies classes at UC Berkeley, he called for Dartmouth’s Greek system to become co-ed. “I wanted people to have fun together not in a segregated way,” he says. The proposal was controversial, met with resistance, and ultimately led to only modest change. But Beebe took something more lasting from the experience: Progress isn’t always about winning; it’s about showing up and pushing forward.

After graduating, Beebe started his career in politics, working for a consulting firm and interning in the Clinton White House. But it was the emerging internet boom that captured his attention. With little more than curiosity and initiative, he built one of the first political campaign websites—at a time when few others could see the internet’s potential for social change.

The experience emboldened him. He moved to San Francisco and co-founded Bigstep.com, an e-commerce platform aimed at small businesses. It was, as Beebe puts it, “literally Shopify before Shopify.” The idea was bold, risky, and exciting. But not everyone saw it. Venture investors were skeptical that anyone would ever shop online or put their credit card on the open internet. Eventually, he secured funding, built the company to 140 employees, and launched a major initiative with AOL. But after three years, he made a move that defined his leadership style: He stepped down as CEO, recognizing the company needed a different skill set to scale further. “I tell founders all the time,” he says, “sometimes the bravest thing you can do is release yourself.”

Around the same time, the dot-com bust delivered a sharp reminder of the cyclical nature of progress. When he was riding high at Bigstep, he spoke to Harvard Business School as a sterling example of success. But after the company floundered with the rest of e-commerce in the late 90s, he was back at Harvard as a cautionary tale. The dual experience became a cornerstone of his career philosophy: History may not repeat, but it often rhymes.

In the early 2000s, Beebe sensed the next seismic shift: clean energy. Long before solar and wind were mainstream, he joined Bill Gross at Idealab to launch a solar company. His instincts were sharp. With Gross securing a high-profile TED Talk launch and major backers like Jeff Bezos and Larry Page, Beebe helped lead the company through the clean tech boom. Later, he founded Energy Innovation Solutions, known as EI Solutions, which installed large-scale solar projects, including one of Google’s earliest solar arrays, before selling the business to Suntech.

Beebe was newly married at the time. He and his wife Jessica had weathered a long-distance relationship and were now expecting their first child, a son. As time went on, they had twin girls. The relentless pace of global sales at Suntech, however, brought him to a personal crossroads. He traveled a lot in those days, leaving behind his young family. Observing his peers in airport lounges—the young ones energized, but many of the others burned out and bitter—he decided to step away from the frenetic lifestyle to focus on his family.

But progress, for Beebe, is never linear. In stepping back, he stepped toward his next chapter. Reconnecting with old friends James Joaquin and Ev Williams, he helped in 2014 to launch Obvious Ventures, a new approach to venture capital focused on “world-positive investing.” The opportunity felt inevitable: Work with brilliant, values-aligned founders on transformative ideas.

Now a decade into venture, Beebe’s firm-wide leadership on planetary health investments reflects his belief in incremental change with lasting impact. He seeks out founders who share his vision: “Passionate, driven people with extraordinary integrity who want to change the world.”

As he looks ahead, Beebe remains guided by the principle that has defined his journey: Progress is built in steps—some bold, some small, but all necessary. His vision for the future is clear: a world where solutions to climate change, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy emerge from persistence, partnership, and the courage to keep moving forward.