Paige Craig (born 1975) is a venture capitalist and general partner at Arena Ventures, a founder-focused, seed stage venture capital firm based in Los Angeles. [1]
He began his career in the military in 1992, where he went to West Point, ultimately becoming a cadet. [2] In 1995, he dropped out of West Point and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps with his time in the Marines strongly influencing the development of his '33 principles for investment' [3] He got his undergraduate in Information Technology from the University of Maryland, later earning an M.B.A from National University. [4]
He enlisted in the Marines and was promoted to sergeant before leaving the service in 2000. [5] After the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, he created the Lincoln Group and started winning Pentagon contracts to assist with "psychological operations". [5] In 2007, he sold his share of the Lincoln Group and moved to Los Angeles in 2008. From 2010 to 2012, he was the CEO and cofounder of BetterWorks, whose mission was to help smaller companies create office cultures of offering abundant perks. [2] [5] In May 2012, in what he described as the "lowest point of his professional career", he shut down the company and returned the remaining capital to his investor. [6]
He became an angel investor to over 110 startups from 2008 to 2015. He acquired an early-stage portfolio that included Airbnb, Lyft, AngelList, Postmates, and Klout. [7]
Craig currently leads Arena Ventures. [1]
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential. Some startups become unicorns; that is privately held startup companies valued at over US$1 billion.
Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
Doug Richard is an American entrepreneur best known for his television appearances in the United Kingdom. He appeared as a "Dragon" on the first two series of Dragons' Den and was also a government adviser.
Irving Azoff is an American entertainment executive and chairman of Full Stop Management, which represents recording artists.
Vishal Gondal is an Indian entrepreneur and angel investor. He is the founder and CEO of GOQii.
Michael Jones is an American entrepreneur and investor. Jones is currently the CEO of startup studio Science Inc. In 2017, Jones was named one of Los Angeles’s 500 most influential people by the Los Angeles Business Journal.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors usually give support to start-ups at the initial moments and when most investors are not prepared to back them. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital, as well as to provide advice to their portfolio companies. Over the last 50 years, the number of angel investors has greatly increased.
GV, formerly Google Ventures, is the venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc., founded by Bill Maris, that provides seed, venture, and growth stage funding to technology companies. The firm operates independently from Google and makes financially driven investment decisions. GV seeks to invest in startup companies in a variety of fields ranging from the Internet, software, and hardware to life science, healthcare, artificial intelligence, transportation, cyber security and agriculture. GV was founded as Google Ventures in 2009.
Samuel H. Altman is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator.
SpinMedia was an American digital publisher which owned a number of pop culture websites, including Spin, Stereogum, Vibe, and The Frisky.
onefinestay is a hospitality company headquartered in London. It was founded in 2009.
AngelList is a U.S. website for startups, angel investors, and job-seekers looking to work at startups. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge.
RidePal offers corporate commute bus services for companies and individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. RidePal works on a shared mobility or collaborative consumption model for corporate commuters, with route planning based on commuter demand and geography, as well as corporate recruiting priorities.
Spencer Rascoff is an entrepreneur and company leader. He was the co-founder and former CEO of Zillow Group, and one of the co-founders of Hotwire.com. He also co-founded dot.LA, Los Angeles' leading news source for startups, where he is chairman; and Pacaso, a real estate platform that makes second home ownership more accessible, where he is on the board of directors. In 2020 Rascoff created Supernova, a special purpose acquisition company. Rascoff is on the board of directors of Palantir. Additionally, in 2019 Rascoff was a Visiting Executive Professor at Harvard Business School where he co-created and co-taught the “Managing Tech Ventures” course. He also hosts the "Office Hours" podcast.
Shyp was a shipping company that operated in the years 2013–2018. The company picked up, packaged, and shipped items through USPS and other major carriers. The company was founded in San Francisco by Kevin Gibbon, Joshua Scott and Jack Smith. Until 2017, the company operated in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
ZeroCater is a foodservice company headquartered in San Francisco, CA, specializing in providing companies with catered meals from local restaurants, caterers, and food trucks. The company expanded its offerings in 2017 to include a fully customizable solution for office snacking called ZeroCater Snacks and Kitchens. In 2018, the company expanded its offerings to deliver alcohol with ZeroCater Pours. The company launched Enterprise Catering for companies with 500 or more employees in 2019. ZeroCater currently feeds thousands of companies including, Slack, PagerDuty, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Salesforce, JUUL, Datadog and Cisco Meraki. As of November 2017, ZeroCater operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Washington D.C. and Chicago.
Chris Hollod is a venture capitalist, angel investor, and advisor in Los Angeles, and Hollod is also the co-founder and CEO of Tailwind Acquisition Corp., a $300 million public special-purpose acquisition company. Hollod has completed more than 150 deals across five different investment entities, including investments in Uber, Airbnb, Houzz, Spotify, Pinterest, Duolingo, Airtable, Oscar Health, Flexport, Casper, and Warby Parker.
Adora Cheung is an American entrepreneur, investor, and programmer. She was the co-founder and CEO of housecleaning business Homejoy. After Homejoy shut down, Cheung started working exclusively for Y Combinator as a partner until February, 2021.
David Tisch is a businessman and angel investor based in New York City. He is managing partner of BoxGroup, a seed-stage capital firm, and a co-founder of TechStars New York City. He is the grandson of American businessman Laurence Tisch, co-owner of Loews Corporation. His great-uncle, Preston Robert Tisch purchased the New York Giants, now co-owned by Steve Tisch, who produced the films Forrest Gump and Risky Business.
ClutchPoints is a sports media company owned by ClutchPoints, Inc. It was founded by Nish Patel in 2015 and began as a part of the Startup UCLA program. ClutchPoints covers the National Basketball Association, National Football League, and Major League Baseball. Their headquarters are in West Los Angeles.