About me

I’m Jay and I’m a partner at BlueRun Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm investing out of Menlo Park, Beijing, and Seoul.  I love working with founders and striving to support and help them build great companies.  So I basically consider my job at BlueRun to be totally and completely awesome–a great match with what I love doing.

Our focus at BRV is heavily towards mobile and consumer internet, and most of our deals tend to be Series A or seed stage deals.  I work with and serve on the boards of several of our portfolio companies, including Foodspotting, AppCentral, Thumb, and AppRedeem.  I also am a board observer at EggCartel, the makers of EggDrop, the easiest way to sell stuff using your smartphone, and Zmanda, an open source cloud backup company.

I’ve also been an entrepreneur and founder.  I am the co-founder of Moonshoot, whose mission is to help children anywhere learn English as a foreign language, and I’ve been a partner in the independent software development company, Bema Studios, LLC.  I think this gives me credibility in working with founders, but this is of course in the eye of the beholder.

I am passionate about helping and mentoring startups, whether I invest or not.  I’ve worked with Adeo Ressi‘s FounderInstitute since it was founded.  I led the FounderInstitute’s San Francisco chapter in 2011, and I have mentored in several Silicon Valley and Seattle sessions.

I love my work, and I”ll write a lot about that here.

Other stuff about me: I’m passionate about my wife and family (hi Aim!) :) ,  ice hockey, skiing, and cross-fit.

Feel free to ping me on twitter (@jay_jamison) or find me on facebook (facebook.com/jay.jamison) or linkedin or whatever.  Glad to meet you.

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  • Max Klein

    Hey Jay,

    I recently saw your presentation on Udemy about creating the perfect pitch.
    I found it very educational and really quite interesting. Your emphasis on distribution is something that I always held highest as well, but didnt really come across when I was reading Nivi and Naval’s manuscript on how to pitch to hacks (Venture Hacks).
    I’ve been in development of my own startup for about 3 months. This is my third startup, and by far my biggest. Im really interested in institutions like the Founders Institute, and the other accelerator programs; for reasons far beyond the simple seed funding.
    I live in LA and have struggled for a while to really find a good startup community, that’s why I really want to join one of these incubators. I love start-ups, I love entrepreneurship, and I really would love the opportunity to learn and develop projects with like-minded people and be mentored by guys Ive looked up too for years.

    My questions really is; my startup is very consumer based, has a huge market, but is tough to disrupt…which accelerator program do you think would be a best fit, if you know?
    I’ve inquired about the Founders Institute and have spoken to various mentors such as Ken Wahlster and Andrew Beinbrick…but they say that founders institute is more a networking and educational facility before an actual accelerator program…
    Is this true?

    Once again, thanks for your time, and GREAT speech!!

  • http://www.gotrend.me Robert Kuntz

    Hi Jay,

    I just read your article “Beyond Facebook: The Rise Of Interest-Based Social Networks” and I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY! I also wanted to see if we can connect?

    I am a software developer and am just completing the beta release for our new “interest-based” social networking application.

    Although I now have the software, I don’t have a team so to speak. I want to take this to the next level. Seed funding, establish the company, enterprise-proof the software and launch the platform.

    Please take a look:
    http://www.gotrend.me

    I have thousands of man-hours into developing this platform and am really excited about this software.

    Please let me know if you can help in any way. Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

    Regards,
    Robert Kuntz
    Developer
    GoTrend.me

    GoTrendMe!
    http://www.gotrend.me

    ZilloSoft
    http://www.zillosoft.com

    Robert Kuntz
    http://www.robertkuntz.com

  • jjamison101

    sure robert–drop me a line at jjamison brv com

  • http://www.gotrend.me Robert Kuntz

    Ok sent email – would like to chat about our new social media agency partnership with Bill Ganz. (see http://www.lolsystem.info) TY :)

  • Tom Blair

    starting up a manufacturing company in the friction stir welding field. Although not your specialty I see you have a passion for startups. I would really value your thoughts and opinions on what we would like to do.