Why Creativity is AI's Number One Use Case | NEA
Talks about Generative AI, Chat GPT and AI creativity
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James Kaplan
Investor at New Enterprise Associates
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
James Kaplan is a Venture Investor at NEA in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a background in finance and investment banking. He has experience as a Managing Partner & Founder at California Crescent Fund and as a Managing Partner at Rough Draft Ventures.
Kaplan's career highlights include his role as a Venture Investor at NEA and his experience as a Managing Partner & Founder at California Crescent Fund, showcasing his expertise in venture capital and investment management.
Work Experience
Venture Investor
2023 - Current
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 For over 40 years, NEA has partnered with generational software companies like Databricks, Plaid, Tableau, MongoDB, and Cloudflare and consumer companies like Robinhood, Duolingo, Jet.com, Scopely, Glu Mobile, GoodLeap, MasterClass and Houzz. The firm has backed over 1,000 companies and had 300+ IPOs
New Enterprise Associates is a venture capital firm that focuses on investments in technology and healthcare startups.
Venture Partner
2023 - 2023
Multi-stage venture fund started by the founding engineer at Cruise
Factorial Funds is a private investment firm that invests in the technology, financial services, media, and consumer sectors.
Finance & Monetization Consultant
2023 - 2023
Startup game studio (raised $36M) founded by the StarCraft II team. Building a new RTS game
Frost Giant Studios is a production studio focused on real-time strategy (RTS) games for competitive gaming on PCs.
Raised $36,908,824.00 from MANTIS Venture Capital, Kakao Games, Global Founders Capital, Riot Games, Gaingels and BITKRAFT Ventures.
Strategic Finance - GTM
2023 - 2023
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
GlossGenius is a vertical SaaS platform for small business owners across the salon and studio space.
Raised $70,620,000.00 from L Catterton, HearstLab, Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Ventures and Wormhole Capital.
Investment Banking Analyst – Technology
2022 - 2023
Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) Group
Credit Suisse Group is a financial services company that advises clients in all aspects of finance.
Managing Partner & Founder
2020 - 2022
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
Southern California's 1st student-run VC. First Movers in Fellow Student Dreamers
Managing Partner
2020 - 2022
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
College Internships
2018 - 2022
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
Founding Team – Head of Growth & BD
2018 - 2021
Built and grew a mental health peer support community for Gen Z Acquired by Blue Fever in 2021
Trill Project is an anonymous social network allowing its users to freely express themselves in a community.