Jalak Jobanputra
Venture capitalist with 20 years in digital media, enterprise software, broadband infrastructure, healthcare IT, edtech, mobile & Internet - NYC, Silicon Valley, Boston, India, Africa, Europe. Investments include Outside.in (sold to AOL), TxVia (prepaid card processing platform, sold to Google), Thumbplay (mobile music, sold to Clear Channel), NextG (microcell towers, sold to Crown Castle), Datasynapse (enterprise grid/cloud computing, sold to Tibco), Viacore (enterprise partner integration, sold to IBM), Demantra (demand chain mgmt, sold to Oracle), Yodlee (online banking), Zinio (magazine ereader).
Spearheaded formation of NYCSeed in 2008, seed fund for early stage startups in NYC. Served on its Investment Committee and Venture Advisory Board. Portfolio includes Enterproid, HowAboutWe, Seatgeek, Magnetic,Ticketfly. Selection committee, mentor and speaker for 2010 Seedstart, NYC's 1st accelerator bootcamp.
Founding team of online financial services startup in 1997. Media/telco/tech investment banker NYC and London from 1994-1997 working with mobile operators, cable companies and telecom privatizations globally. Actively involved in education reform and social entrepreneurship. Board Trustee of Achievement First Bushwick (Brooklyn) Charter Schools and Executive Board of the Social Investment Council of Echoing Green. Mentor for Unreasonable Institute in 2010 in Boulder. Consulted on growth and replication strategy for Gates Foundation funded charter schools, including Big Picture Company (Providence, RI). Consulted for the UN Development Organization (UNIDO) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania training women entrepreneurs and establishing local microfinance programs in 1999.
Speaker at VC, women's entrepreneurship and startup conferences, including:
Structure Data (GigaOm), Social Media Week (NYC), Regional Entrepreneurship Summit (Bali), Mobile World Congress (Barcelona), TechCrunch Disrupt (NYC), InternetWeek NYC, Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard)