Jacob is a Venture Partner at Village Global and a 20-year Silicon Valley veteran entrepreneur and venture capital investor. He's also Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, where he has been investing across AI, computer vision, SaaS, gaming, and crypto since 2016. Before Shasta, he was a multi-time founder of technology companies spanning e-commerce, media, and fintech, and spent two years at Microsoft leading the US growth of BizSpark, the precursor to Microsoft Ventures. Jacob is a Kauffman Fellow, a Gates Millennium Scholar, and holds a BA in Political Science from Yale.
Community building. In every place and role I’ve ever been, I’ve been a part of building a strong community. In college it was founding a fraternity, in my startups it was bringing customers together to learn from each other, and in venture it’s been enabling founders to achieve their goals through broad community support. I believe we are better together.
Constant curiosity and context switching matched with the ability to build relationships quickly.
Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella. Yes I’m a golfer but the mental psychology taught in this book is applicable far beyond swinging a club – I use it every day in business and in life. This practice urges high levels of training, preparation, thinking-in-advance and visualization of success BEFORE you are “in the game”, so that when you are in execution mode you are able to move actively, swiftly and decisively to your end goal. i.e. “Don’t think, just flow,” Because of the prepared mind and the trust of self, this often leads to success. However when it does not and you end up in a failure situation, you are equipped with the mental fortitude to know that failure is a part of the process, and the confidence to execute again with an equal expectation of success.
I love to get into the outdoors hiking, fishing, and camping. Northern California is such a bounty of beautiful nature, and being surrounded by water, big trees and the natural environment is restorative for me. I also love sharing good food and wine with friends.
