Why Riskgaming?
Riskgaming is a series of strategic scenarios that immerse players like you in complex decisions at the heart of real-world challenges. Through newsletters, podcasts and the games themselves, we explore the complex tradeoffs at the intersections of science, technology, finance and the human condition. Read more in our manifesto.
What is Lux Capital?
Over the past two decades, Lux Capital has expanded from our New York City roots to Silicon Valley, and built a firm with over $5 billion AUM and more than 30 full-time professionals, with a wide spectrum of technical backgrounds and the versatility to invest at any stage, from $100,000 to $100 million.
Who is the Riskgaming team?
Danny Crichton, Editor in Chief
Danny Crichton analyzes technology, growth and power as Editor-in-Chief of Riskgaming and Head of Editorial at Lux Capital.
Prior to Lux, he was managing editor at TechCrunch as well as previously a foreign correspondent based in Seoul, South Korea. While there, he wrote more than 1,000 news stories and longform analyses chronicling U.S.-Asia technology relations, semiconductors, data infrastructure, fintech, disaster and climate tech, venture finance, product development, and a wide number of other complex subjects with technical and policy intersections.
In addition to his reporting and analysis at TechCrunch, he co-hosted its leading podcast Equity; co-programmed stages at its flagship Disrupt SF and Berlin conferences as well as its Sessions and Early Stage events; launched the premium news service Extra Crunch and grew it to seven figures of revenue; co-managed a multi-million dollar freelance budget; developed the TC-1 series of deep startup profiles and The TechCrunch List; and contributed broadly to the organization’s news, operational, and talent development strategy.
There are cases in which the greatest daring is the greatest wisdom. –Clausewitz
He’s also published research on semiconductors, technology and economic development with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, and the National Review. Formerly, he was an early-stage venture capitalist with General Catalyst in Palo Alto and Charles River Ventures in Boston and New York.
He was awarded a Fulbright research scholarship to South Korea, where he studied the development of Korea’s startup ecosystem. He’s an honors graduate of Stanford University, where he studied mathematical and computational sciences and wrote a thesis on the development of computer science as an academic discipline, which won the school’s Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research.
Danny is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Laurence Pevsner, Director of Programming
Laurence Pevsner creates media, experiences, and pedagogy that bring people together and illuminate the messy intersection of science, technology, and public policy.
Before coming to Lux, Laurence spent a year as an inaugural Moynihan Public Scholar at the City College of New York, where he taught and conducted research and wrote a monthly column for the literary and humor publication McSweeney’s as its 2022 Grand Prize Columnist Winner. He remains a resident fellow at the Moynihan Center.
Laurence previously served as the Director of Speechwriting for Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations and a member of President Biden's cabinet. As part of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations Executive Office, Laurence advised the Ambassador on messaging and policy and oversaw everything in her voice, including over 650 speeches.
Throughout his tenure at the State Department, Laurence traveled with the Ambassador across the country and around the world. He met with refugees from Afghanistan, protestors from Iran, defectors from North Korea, dissidents from Nicaragua, and assault survivors from South Sudan. He also advised her in official meetings with policy and political leaders ranging from the Administrator of NASA to the President of Costa Rica to the Foreign Minister of Ukraine.
Laurence served in the writers room for the 2024 Democratic National Convention and in the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign’s paid media writers room. He cut his teeth at West Wing Writers, a speechwriting and strategy firm, where he counselled CEOs, celebrities, foundation heads, and officials at all levels of government on strategic messaging and thought leadership, writing products as short as a tweet and as long as a book. His remarks and ideas were showcased in venues like the White House and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and his ghostwriting was featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker, among many other publications.
Laurence has delivered lectures at Cornell, Georgetown, Amherst, and the City College of New York, and is a NextGen member of Foreign Policy for America. He is working on a book on why public apologies fail and a novel about buried treasure. He is a magna cum laudegraduate of Amherst College and lives in Brooklyn.
