Jared Hecht

Last updated
Jared Hecht
Bornc. 1987, March 11th [1]
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Columbia University
OccupationBusinessman
Known forFounder of Fundera, Co-founder of GroupMe

Jared Hecht is an American entrepreneur, and the co-founder and CEO of Fundera, an online small business lending aggregator as well as group messaging app GroupMe. [2]

Contents

Early life

Hecht studied political science at Columbia University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 2009. [3] While a student at Columbia, he was the managing director and publisher for the university's student-written guidebook, Inside New York. [3] [4]

Career

Hecht was an early employee at Tumblr and led business development. [5] [6] In 2010, Hecht co-founded group messaging app, GroupMe, which allows users to create a private group to which they can send text messages or make conference calls, with his friend Steve Martocci, founder of Blade and Splice who was then a software engineer with Gilt Groupe. [6] They won the South by Southwest breakout ward in 2011. [6] The two raised $11 million from Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst in 2011. [7] After being live for 370 days, Microsoft purchased GroupMe for $80 million. [8]

One of Hecht's early hires at GroupMe, Zach Sims, also a Columbia alumnus, went on to found the online code-learning platform Codecademy. [9]

Hecht later became an angel investor and invested in companies such as Sweetgreen, TransferWise, and Flatiron Health. [10] [11] In October 2013, he launched Fundera, an online broker that helps small businesses get loans from non-bank lenders, after seeing a family member struggle with bank loans, and raised a total of $18.9 million for his platform from investors such as Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, David Tisch, and more. [12] [13] A year since it was launched, the company has secured more than $60 million in credit for 1,200 small-business owners. [14]

In 2015, he was named in Forbes' "30 under 30" list for the Consumer Tech category. [15]

Personal life

He is married to Carrie Weprin, a film producer, and the couple live in Brooklyn with their two children. [3] [16] [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vinod Khosla</span> American businessman

Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Pincus</span> American Internet entrepreneur

Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.

Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason Calacanis</span> American businessman

Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.

Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successful investments include Affirm, DoorDash, Square, Impossible Foods and Instacart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index Ventures</span> European worldwide venture capital firm

Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has invested in a number of companies and raised approximately $5.6 billion. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.

GGV Capital is a global venture capital firm. The firm was established in 2000 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Formerly known as Granite Global Ventures, the firm has become one of the most active American investors in Chinese artificial intelligence companies. As of 2021, it manages $9.2 billion in capital across 17 funds.

Klaus Hommels is a German venture capitalist. He focuses on early and growth-stage investments and has founded his own venture capital fund by the name of Lakestar, through which he has been investing mainly in digital businesses. He has been invested in Facebook, Skype and Xing; other examples are Klarna and Revolut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amol Sarva</span> American entrepreneur

Amol Sarva is an American entrepreneur who founded Knotel, Halo Neuroscience, Knote, Peek, and Virgin Mobile USA.

GroupMe is a mobile group messaging app owned by Microsoft. It was launched in May 2010 by the private company GroupMe. In August 2011, GroupMe delivered over 100 million messages each month and by June 2012, that number jumped to 550 million. In 2013, GroupMe had over 12 million registered users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Rabois</span> American technology executive and investor

Keith Rabois is an American technology executive and investor. He is currently a general partner at Founders Fund. He is widely known for his early-stage startup investments and his executive roles at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide, and Square. Rabois invested in Yelp and Xoom prior to each company's initial public offering ("IPO") and sits on both companies' boards of directors. He is considered a member of the PayPal Mafia, a group that includes PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and PayPal employee and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim. Additionally, Rabois has been involved in investments in YouTube, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbrite, Wish, and The Org.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Codecademy</span> Online code-learning platform

Codecademy is an American online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, and Swift, as well as markup languages HTML and CSS. The site also offers a paid "Pro" option that gives users access to personalized learning plans, quizzes, and realistic projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramy Adeeb</span>

Ramy Adeeb is the founder and CEO of social curation platform Snip.it and is a venture capitalist investor in start-ups such as Square and Groupme.

Gousto, a trading name of SCA Investments Limited, is a British meal kit retailer, headquartered in Shepherd's Bush, London, founded by Timo Boldt and James Carter. Gousto supplies subscribers with recipe kit boxes which include ready-measured, fresh ingredients and easily followed recipes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Webflow</span> American software company

Webflow, Inc. is an American company, based in San Francisco, that provides software as a service for website building and hosting. Their online visual editor platform allows users to design, build, and launch websites. According to W3Techs, Webflow is used by 0.6% of the top 10 million websites.

Oscar Health, Inc. is an American health insurance company, founded in 2012 by Joshua Kushner, Kevin Nazemi and Mario Schlosser, and is headquartered in New York City. The company focuses on the health insurance industry through telemedicine, healthcare focused technological interfaces, and transparent claims pricing systems which would make it easier for patients to navigate.

RRE Ventures is an American Venture Capital firm based in New York City. The firm primarily invests in seed, series A and series B rounds and focuses on companies operating in the software, internet, communications, aerospace, robotics, 3D printing and financial services sectors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ICONIQ Capital</span> American wealth management and investment firm

ICONIQ Capital is an American wealth management and investment firm based in San Francisco, California. It functions as a family office that provides wealth management services to high net worth clients such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Weiner. The firm also is involved in investments related to Private Equity and Venture Capital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zach Sims</span> American entrepreneur

Zach Sims is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Codecademy. He currently serves as the CEO of the company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thrive Capital</span> American venture capital firm

Thrive Capital is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. It focuses on software and internet investments. The firm was founded by Joshua Kushner who is also co-founder of Oscar Health and minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.

References

  1. ↑ GroupMe founder on his $80M exit (and why he's building his new company differently), Published: Dec 6, 2017, Mixergy
  2. ↑ D'Onfro, Jillian. "How 20-Something Serial Entrepreneur Jared Hecht Boosted His Startup's Success By Over 5X". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  3. 1 2 3 "Jared Hecht '09 - Columbia College Today". www.college.columbia.edu. Retrieved 4 June 2019.
  4. ↑ "An Angel in New York: Jared Hecht". AlleyWatch. 2014-03-27. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  5. ↑ "Jared Hecht, Co-Founder & CEO of Fundera". ventureforamerica.org. 24 August 2016. Retrieved 4 June 2019.
  6. 1 2 3 Zimmerman, Eilene (27 June 2011). "Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci, Founders of GroupMe". Inc.com. Retrieved 4 June 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ↑ "GroupMe Scores $10.6 Million From Khosla Ventures And Others". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  8. ↑ Shontell, Alyson (Feb 6, 2014). "26-Year-Old Jared Hecht Sold His First Startup For ~ $80 Million In 370 Days, And He Has Raised $3.4 Million For A New Venture". Business Insider. Retrieved 4 June 2019.
  9. ↑ Zhang, Maggie. "9 Startup Lessons From The Founder Of Codecademy". Business Insider. Retrieved 2021-08-21.
  10. ↑ "How Jared Hecht's Fundera is transforming how small businesses find financial solutions". Built In NYC. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  11. ↑ Ewan (2017-06-21). "Jared Hecht of Fundera". FinTech Profile. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  12. ↑ Michael, del Castillo (Oct 16, 2015). "The importance of not being an arrogant jerk when raising capital". New York Business Journal. Retrieved 2020-06-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ↑ "Jared Hecht '09CC, Founder of Fundera". Columbia Entrepreneurship. 2017-08-29. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  14. ↑ Kosoff, Maya. "A 20-something sold his first company for $80 million in 370 days — now he's raising $11 million for his new startup". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  15. ↑ "CONSUMER TECH". Forbes.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ↑ "Carrie Weprin, Jared Hecht". The New York Times. 2011-09-03. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  17. ↑ "Bios". Once in a Blue. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.