Jerry Neumann has invested in Internet startups for the past 15 years.
He received his BS in 1988 and his MS in 1990 in electrical engineering from Columbia University and later received his MBS in 1993 from NYU. He is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University where he teaches a course called “Managing Technological Innovation.”
After earning his degrees in electrical engineering, he became an engineer with IBM and designed part of the CP microcode execution engine for the S/390 series of mainframes. Upon leaving IBM, he went to work as a management consultant for Deloitte and Touche Consulting and wound up in their Restructuring Services Group. By 1995, he joined Prodigy Services and became part of their senior management team that transformed Prodigy from walled garden online services to an ISP and portal.
Once he left Prodigy, he ran Omnicom Group’s Internet division, among other online agencies. In 2001, he formed Seneca Investments, a venture capital firm focused on Internet marketing and media firms, and acquired the Communicade portfolio from Omnicom, which funded many of the early Internet marketing pioneers, including Razorfish, Agency.com, Organic and Oyster Interactive.
From 2004-2006, he was also the co-founder and vice president of Root Markets, a marketplace that allows consumers to sell their own personal data. The company was backed by First Round Capital, the Chicago Board of Trade and other investors.
By 2008, Neumann started focusing more on angel investing and in May of that year began investing through Neu Venture Capital. He typically invest in 5-7 startups per year, with $50k-$250k in each deal.
Investment Fund:
Neu Venture Capital (Founded in 2008)
Sector Focus:
Advertising, Advertising Platforms, Analytics, Art, Auctions, B2B, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Business Services, Cloud Computing, Consulting, Deep Information Technology, Development Platforms, E-Commerce, Enterprise Software, Finance, Financial Services, Information Technology, Internet Infrastructure, Knowledge Management, Location Based Services, Maps, Marketplaces, Messaging, Mobile, Optimization, Payments, Performance Marketing, Prediction Markets, Privacy, Professional Services, Quantitative Marketing, Real Time, Reviews and Recommendations, SaaS, Sales and Marketing, Social Commerce, Social Media Platforms, Software, Visualization, Wireless.
Selected Investments:
Karma, Flurry, Lucky Sort, DataHero, Granify, Media Armor, Profitably, Tuition.io, Placeiq, YieldBot, Handipoints, 33Across, Simple, Magnetic, Metamarkets, PerformLine,The Trade Desk, Percolate, awe.sm, Optimal.
Boards:
Simple
PlaceIQ
Yieldbot
Expertise Areas:
Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Data-Driven Business Infrastructure, Strategy, Digital Marketing, Digital Media, Analytics.
Blogs, Twitter & Websites:
Blog
Twitter
Quora
Tumblr
LinkedIn
Memorable Quotes:
On what he does: “I’m pretty deep in a specific area (take a look at the companies I’ve invested in and worked at) so I can vet ideas, talk about how things fit into the ecosystem, suggest and introduce potential partners, etc. That’s probably my unique value-add, but I’ve been investing for a while, so I can do the standard investor stuff: business model, hiring, financial, etc.”
