Mike Jung

Founders Circle is a growth stage venture firm that “invests in people'', wholly committed to those who are leading today's fastest growing companies and navigating the unique challenges of transitioning from product-market fit to hyperscale. Founders Circle focuses on “people building” by way of two services: flexible capital to meet the needs of growth-stage companies and a private leadership community called The Circle, connecting 250+ on-the-ground CEOs and CFOs who collectively engage in peer-to-peer professional development.

Alpha is a private network of entrepreneurs and industry executives passionate about the next generation of technology. Alpha was born of a need for founders to have a forum to engage with their peers in candid, thoughtful conversation. Today Alpha consists of over 1000 members, across several geographies, including SF, LA, Seattle, Toronto, Boston and Chicago. Over the past decade we've hosted well over 500 live and virtual events to help entrepreneurs connect, create and learn.

At Panorama Capital, we focused on investing in early and mid-stage technology and life sciences startups. I learned how to identify companies headed for breakout growth, along with the challenges those companies faced getting there.

One of my investments at JPMorgan Partners stands out as a moment when I realized the importance of founder liquidity. It is a classic story of a founder who paid himself nothing while starting his business, took time to find the right product/market fit, and lived through the ups and downs of the dot-com bubble. Once he found that fit and began scaling his company, we invested. When I learned that for five years before we invested, he had barely paid himself. In addition to growth capital, part of the financing provided him and his co-founder with some liquidity, to give them some much needed breathing room to focus on building his business, but also to have the financial security for this "other" startup - starting a new family.

Like Ask Jeeves, working at Exigen helped me understand what is like to be an operator in a fast growing, highly dynamic technology company. Working closely with a founder with a grand vision provided a lot of insight into all of the ups and downs a founder experiences. Scaling a business is non-linear. It's filled with ups and downs and peaks and valleys. Helping connect founders with other founders who have negotiated this path before is something that I've always strived to do.

Promoted from Director in 2000 Working at Ask Jeeves was a powerful experience. I personally learned a lot about how a company experiencing breakaway growth grows from 50 to 500 employees in the span of 2 years. I developed a first hand understanding of what to do (and not do!), when scaling an organization in short order. One of the reasons I founded Founders Circle was because of my own personal experience at Ask Jeeves - where I saw so many, myself included, so focused on building a business that they often neglected their own personal financial needs.

At Robertson Stephens, we worked almost exclusively with fast growing tech startups. As an M&A advisor, I worked with many entrepreneurs who ultimately sold their companies. Understanding that process, from a financial, strategic and importantly, a personal perspective, was tremendous. It taught me a lot about how companies think when they’re acquiring a company, and how entrepreneurs should navigate those discussions.

Gunderson was a "startup" law firm when I joined - my first taste of building a fast growing startup. Working at Gunderson gave me a deep understanding of how to structure transactions and advise and work with entrepreneurs and VCs alike. Instead of just being able to design a building, Gunderson taught me how to "build" it, brick by brick.

The most formative thing I did at the UofM was travel to China to consult with a large state-owned auto manufacturer to reinvent themselves from a big bureaucracy into something more nimble. I learned is that it’s really hard to change and innovate in big organizations. That in part what drove me to focus on startups where innovation and disruption lie at the core of what they do.

At Michigan Law, I taught a legal writing and research class. Why? For anyone who went to law school, they can tell you about the struggle – that first year when you have no idea how to write a brief. I enjoy helping others - and teaching this class helped me help others learn what is effectively a new language and improve myself. Seeing students achieve and progress through their first year was amazingly rewarding.