Jim Scheinman has spent the last 20 years of his career as an Entrepreneur in one capacity or another. He’s been a founder, executive, angel investor, attorney, mentor capitalist and venture capitalist at many successful Silicon Valley consumer startups. In January 2013, Scheinman launched Maven Ventures Growth Labs in Palo Alto to tap into the massive trend of the groundswell of entrepreneurship and to scale his successful angel investing business, Maven Ventures, which he founded in late 2008. Four of his ten investments since 2008 have achieved successful exits and four others are doing extremely well, like Tango. Maven Ventures Growth Labs Fund is a venture fund from which Jim invests in the startups that are incubated in the Growth Labs.
BACKGROUND
Immediately prior to founding Maven Ventures, Scheinman was an entrepreneur in residence (“EIR”) at Charles River Ventures, a leading venture firm where he helped source, vet and advise their web 2.0 portfolio companies. Scheinman is one of the early pioneers of the social networking phenomenon as one of the first employees and the former head of business development and sales at the first social networking site, Friendster. There he created the concept of ‘engagement marketing,’ enabling consumers to become brand advocates and spreading brands’ messages amongst their network of friends. In 2005, Jim left Friendster to join co-founders Michael & Xochi Birch to launch Bebo as the first employee and Board member. At Bebo, he was integral in launching the site, raising the venture round, leading the strategy and its eventual sale to AOL for $850M in 2008.
