Welcoming Jay Kapoor to LaunchCapital

By Cliff Sirlin

Originally Published May 17, 2018

We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Jay Kapoor as a Senior Associate on the investment team at LaunchCapital!

We were first introduced to Jay through Alex Iskold and the Techstars NYC team. As a Techstars Associate, Jay spent many months helping to recruit new companies to the program and supporting existing accelerator companies on sales, business development and fundraising strategy initiatives. He credits this time working closely with early-stage teams as the reason he developed tremendous empathy for the challenges founders deal with every day and learned the tangible difference that an active, engaged investor can make in helping alleviate these burdens on behalf of the founders.

What caught our eye from the start were Jay’s numerous blog posts spanning topics of direct-to-consumer commerce, mobile-first live entertainment, the nature of investing in sports startups and even the occasional sub-textual film critiques. Jay is unabashed about sharing his opinion when asked for one (and equally less shy when not even asked). He relishes the opportunity to discuss and debate, distilling complex topics into palatable, humorous morsels both in-person and on the written page.

In meeting him, we further recognized that Jay was eager to grow into a role where he not only could own an entire deal process, but where he might manage the pipeline for an entire fund, with a keen focus on streamlining operations to better serve the needs of our Partners, portfolio of companies, and prospective investments.

Prior to joining LaunchCapital, Jay was on the corporate strategy & venture investing team at Madison Square Garden. In this role, Jay focused on opportunities in and around MSG’s new venue initiatives and the future of live entertainment. He started his career as an investment banker (but don’t hold that against him) before spending three seasons at the National Football League on corporate finance and league strategy projects. In total, Jay has spent over six years in and around sports, media, and live entertainment — and yet he only occasionally name drops the fact that he and Roger Goodell were once on a first name basis.

Over the last few years, Jay has also built an impressive network in New York City beyond the sports media world. Given Launch’s sector-agnostic approach to early-stage investing, we are excited about Jay’s ability to identify exceptional opportunities and to develop strong relationships quickly. This will enable Jay to play an important role for Launch, particularly in the rapidly expanding NYC tech & start-up ecosystem.

With his free time, Jay enjoys watching (and writing about) film and TV, singing karaoke (ask him about his college acapella team) and learning how to cook without a Blue Apron subscription. He is also currently training for his 6th half marathon.

Please join us in welcoming Jay to LaunchCapital! Feel free to follow and reach out to say hello to him on Twitter: @jaykapoornyc

Originally published at launchcapital.com.