A Stalwart in Tech Entrepreneurship

With more than thirty percent of its startup ecosystem based in the technology industry, it is evident that New York City has also become a hub for aspiring entrepreneurs. Leading this wave of change is Amish Jani, Founder & Managing Director at FirstMark Capital.

By earning his Bachelor’s degree in Economics in 1999, and his MBA in 1999 from the University of Pennsylvania, Amish set a solid foundation for himself in finance. He went on to serve as a General Partner at Pequot Ventures for the next eight years. In 2008, Amish founded FirstMark—a venture capitalist investment firm—in New York City (NYC). It was here that he began his mission to change the technology industry in the city, and in turn, all around the globe.

FirstMark, under the leadership of Amish, has provided capital investments across the cloud and Internet landscape, including sectors such as SaaS applications, mobile, commerce, education, and healthcare. Being a venture capitalist for nearly 20 years, Amish has invested in industry-defining companies that include Shopify (NYSE: SHOP), InVision, Pendo, Starry, Tracelink, Frame. io, Guru, Bluecore, IMImobile (LSE: IMO), Schoology (acquired by PowerSchool), Boomi (acquired by Dell), Aveksa (acquired by EMC), and many more.He has been recognized by CB Insights and the New York Times as a Top 100 Venture Capitalist globally. Amish Jani aims to build a technology landscape in NYC in the coming years to rival that of Silicon Valley.

The Frontrunner of Consumer Markets

“I think good VCs are probably 80 percent wrong, bad VCs are 100 percent wrong,” cites Spark Capital co-founder and General Partner Bijan Sabet. For the last 11 years or so, Bijan has enjoyed tremendous success by investing in some of the most prominent consumer technology tartups like Tumblr, Oculus, Twitter and Warby Parker. Being a venture capitalist with legendary wins in the consumer social market, he has aided various organizations to evolve into industry-juggernauts that they are today. He has invested in numerous community-centric and community-driven companies such as Skillshare, Tumblr, Stack Exchange, Foursquare, and dozens of others. In this capacity, he has successfully established key alliances, commercial relationships and joint ventures with leading consumer electronics companies. Prior to joining Spark, Bijan had successfully achieved a B.S. degree from Boston College. After that, he would begin his career managing strategic relationships with cable and satellite operators as well as driving product strategy at Moxi Digital. In this role, Bijan was part of the core team that introduced the MoxiMedia Center, a low-cost replacement for digital cable or satellite set-top box. He is widely known to be an outspoken supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union, recently kicking off a series of fundraising out of Silicon Valley for the civil liberties organization. The investor resides in Boston with his wife and three kids and is a passionate amateur photographer. He travels frequently, often with his film camera by his side. He is not an observer of the confluence. He prefers to dwell in it.

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