[1] He previously worked for Silicon Valley technology companies such as Google and Facebook as well as Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

[2] He was a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House[2][3] and a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, a firm on Sand Hill Road.

[20] He maintained that liberal arts degrees are crucial in applying emerging technologies to the creation of breakthrough innovations.

[2] Hartley also criticized fellow venture capitalists such as Marc Andreessen,[21] who previously declared that the average graduate with a degree in English ends up "working in a shoe store”.

[22] He pushed back against Andreesen's position that a liberal arts education limits the dimensionality of one's thinking since it makes students less familiar with mathematical models and statistics.