James K.

Co-Founder

San Francisco, California, United States7 yrs 10 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchAI Enabled

Key Highlights

Expert in AI applications and venture capital.
Led multiple successful funding rounds in AI startups.
Strong background in technology investment banking.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Venture Capitalist specializing in AI and technology investments.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Venture CapitalInvestment Analysis

Other Skills

AI ApplicationsGenerative AISoftware Investment

About

I'm an venture investor at NEA focused on AI applications. You can reach me at jkaplan@nea.com. I'm a generalist but have been particularly intrigued by the way generative AI is impacting creativity and vertical software. Wrote some thoughts here: -https://www.nea.com/blog/creative-ai-use-case -https://www.nea.com/blog/tomorrows-titans-vertical-ai About me: https://www.nea.com/team/james-kaplan

Experience

New enterprise associates (nea)

Venture Investor

Sep 2023 – Present · 2 yrs 6 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

Investor or supported companies like:
Perplexity (follow-ons): the leading model agnostic answer engine
ElevenLabs (Series C): the leading consumer and developer AI audio platform
Backflip (led Series A): generative 3D platform for industrial design & engineering
Genmo (led Series A): the leading open source video generation foundation model
Ceramic (led Seed): AI model training infrastructure
Samaya (led Series A): AI agents for financial services
August (led Seed): flexible AI platform for law firms, especially those in the mid-market
Aurelian (led Series A): AI platform for 911 centers, starting by automating non-emergency calls with voice agents
For over 45+ years, NEA has partnered with generational software companies like Databricks, Plaid, Tableau, MongoDB, and Cloudflare and consumer companies like Robinhood, Opendoor, Duolingo, Jet.com, Scopely, Glu Mobile, GoodLeap, MasterClass and Houzz. The firm has backed over 1,000 companies and had 300+ IPOs

Venture CapitalInvestment AnalysisAI ApplicationsGenerative AISoftware Investment

Factorial funds

Venture Partner

May 2023 – Sep 2023 · 4 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

Multi-stage venture fund started by the founding engineer at Cruise

Frost giant studios, inc.

Finance & Monetization Consultant

May 2023 – Jul 2023 · 2 mos · Irvine, California, United States

Startup game studio (raised $36M) founded by the StarCraft II team. Building a new RTS game

Glossgenius

Strategic Finance - GTM

Jan 2023 – Jan 2023 · 0 mo · San Francisco Bay Area

The all-in-one platform for beauty professionals
Along with traditional FP&A functions, worked with GTM (marketing and partnerships) and CX teams to set processes for understanding headcount planning and unit economics

Credit suisse

Investment Banking Analyst – Technology

Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 · 1 yr · San Francisco, California, United States

Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) Group

California crescent fund

Managing Partner & Founder

Oct 2020 – Jun 2022 · 1 yr 8 mos · Los Angeles, California, United States

Founded a ~$1M AUM venture fund writing $25k pre-seed/seed checks into Southern California student and recent alum startups. Sourced 8 investments including
OneText (onetext.com) Seed: e-commerce text-to-buy. Co-invested with Coatue and Citi Ventures
Conversion (conversion.ai) Seed: AI agents for marketing
222 (222.place) Pre-Seed: social platform recreating serendipity. Co-invested with General Catalyst and NEA Scout Fund

Rough draft ventures

Managing Partner

Oct 2020 – May 2022 · 1 yr 7 mos · Los Angeles, California, United States

Wrote $100k-$150k pre-seed/seed checks into student startups. Sourced 5 investments including:
Conversion (conversion.ai) Pre-Seed
Fanfix (acq. by SuperOrdinary) Pre-Seed

Various companies

College Internships

Jan 2018 – Jan 2022 · 4 yrs

Credit Suisse (Summer Analyst): Technology investment banking
Troy Capital Partners (Venture Investor): LA-based multi-stage venture fund founded by Josh Berman, co-founder of Myspace
Harbor Ridge Capital (Summer Analyst): B2B software focused investment bank
Kestrel Investment Management Corp (Equity Investment Research): Value-driven small-cap public equity investment management firm