James is a five-time Founder, an angel investor in DoorDash, Lyft, and Patreon, and a Founding Partner at NFX.
Before becoming an investor, James was the co-founder and CEO of Tickle, one of the internet’s first successful user-generated companies. Tickle grew to the 18th largest website in the world with over 150 million registered users — before they were acquired in 2004 by Monster for $110 million. It was during this time that James realized the power of network effects as the core growth driver of both B2B and B2C successes across every vertical.
James then co-founded three other successful companies – Wonderhill (online video games, merged with Kabam in 2010 which then sold for $800M), IronPearl (growth analytics SaaS, acquired by PayPal in 2013), and Jiff (enterprise healthcare software, raised $68M from Venrock, GE, J&J, merged with Castlight in 2017 — NASDAQ: CSLT).
As a lifelong learner and developer of talent, James loves sharing wisdom among Founders. He speaks regularly at numerous industry conferences. He’s also been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Silicon Valley Business Journal.
M.B.A., Harvard Business School
B.A., Princeton
HS, Phillips Exeter Academy
Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute
Adventure seeker, has sailed across both the North Atlantic and the South Pacific; father of 4 boys; married to the strongest woman in the world; musician and singer; fascinated by psychology and language; interested in innovative learning models/organizations for community development and networked ecosystems.
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