SPOTLIGHT: NYU Stern Alumnus Jackson Vaughan ‘15
The following spotlight features NYU Stern alumnus Jackson Vaughan. Jackson graduated from Stern’s undergraduate program in 2015 with degrees in global business, economics, and social entrepreneurship. Today, Jackson is a co-founder and managing partner at Konvoy Ventures, an early-stage investment firm that invests in the platforms and technologies at the frontier of gaming.
Jackson and his VC firm recently hit a major achievement milestone; just a few weeks ago Konvoy announced its $150 million fund III. During our interview, Jackson made it clear that this was far from an overnight success. He explained that the seeds for Konvoy and its prosperity were sown throughout his partners and his upbringing and early professional career.
Jackson described frequent moves when he was growing up. His mother was an aid worker, so he spent the vast majority of his youth in developing countries of Central and South America and Africa. This nomadic lifestyle unexpectedly bred childhood friendships with his current co-founders Jason and Josh Chapman.
“I met my co-founders growing up. So Jason and Josh [the other Konvoy co-founders] had a very similar upbringing. Their father was a diplomat and we overlapped a few times in Bolivia and Mozambique. It was a bit of a fluke, but we played video games together growing up and it was something we were all passionate about.”
Jackson caught the entrepreneurial bug at an early age. Along with his current co-founders, Jackson started a paintball business when he was in high school. Jackson spoke modestly about the operation, claiming he was just running a paintball field, but he believes it was enough to spark a burgeoning interest.
This interest ultimately influenced Jackson’s thoughts about where he wanted to attend university. While trying to decide which school would be best for him, Jackson visited NYU. He was inspired by a friend from middle school who attended and always spoke highly about the university and city. Once he experienced NYU and a little of NYC for himself, Jackson quickly fell in love with the university and city and set his sights on attending.
“I thought it was quite amazing, to be honest. It was really cool to see a school in the middle of the city. After I visited, I definitely had a bit of an infatuation with New York. I was lucky enough to get in and really enjoyed my time at NYU. It was definitely an eye-opening experience for me.”
While at NYU, Jackson took full advantage of the community and all its resources. He co-founded and launched a startup with other students called WHIM. He realized that college students have a lot of free time between classes, but most students’ schedules don’t match up. Since schedules are sporadic, no one knows who else is also free. So Jackson and his co-founders designed WHIM to solve this problem leveraging a sorting algorithm to determine which users’ friends were available and nearby to potentially meet up. Jackson said it was a great experience to go through the startup sequence and see what it takes for a founder to actually launch a product. Although the venture didn’t succeed, the experience provided Jackson with a taste of what it took to be a founder.
“It was a fun and super cool experience, even if it failed miserably and didn’t quite go anywhere. I definitely learned a lot about the startup landscape. We did stuff like the pitch competition and the new venture challenge, where we made it to the semifinals. We even spoke to a few investors, which was also a great learning experience, but we didn’t raise any money.”
Upon graduation from NYU, Jackson took a job at IBM, in the Watson group. His team’s core focus was on AI and machine learning use cases within fortune 500 companies.
“I started to go down more of a technical track there [IBM]. I was doing software development and research within that group, but I always had entrepreneurial interests. ”
Jackson feels that what he learned at IBM was invaluable. He gained a significant amount of technical experience and the position gave him a better understanding of how things work within big organizations. He learned what it takes to build a product, and how to solve problems for end users.
Throughout their collegiate days and early professional careers, Jackson, Jason, and Josh stayed in touch and maintained their passion for video games. The group eventually decided to turn that recreational passion into their profession. They felt emboldened to take that step because they realized there was no gaming fund with a focus on platforms and technologies within gaming and they believed they could fill that niche.
Jackson and his co-founders saw that almost all investors were focused on funding studios, the companies that build individual games. The whitespace opportunity that the Konvoy team identified was with the startups creating the underlying infrastructure and platforms that could support the gaming industry. Jackson stressed that this underserved segment, despite the sheer size of the gaming industry, (which is twice the size of the music and film industry combined), flies under the radar a bit.
“We had a passion and interest for gaming from a consumer perspective ourselves, but then we really started to gain an appreciation and interest with the business side of gaming.”
In 2018 the group quit their jobs and jumped into the venture full-time. They immediately started raising capital and even brought in their first hire. This was a risky move for the founding team. They had to quit their stable corporate jobs to start careers in venture capital, an industry that is difficult to break into and strongly based on reputation, a commodity the newcomers did not yet have.
Despite the risks, the team hit the ground running, speaking with numerous founders and industry experts to better their understanding of the market landscape. Jackson credits a lot of this early networking to what eventually became Konvoy’s deal sourcing pipeline. The firm also started to run a newsletter focused on the business of gaming that served as a marketing tool and gave the firm credibility within both the venture and gaming communities.
Jackson stated that he loved his new job, but that it definitely came with a high level of stress, particularly at the beginning when he had no income and minimal deal prospects.
“It was definitely nerve-racking and we did not have much of an income for a while. It probably looked pretty crazy to an outsider. We were trying to start a venture fund when we had no experience in venture and technically didn’t have experience in video gaming.”
Jackson attributes the firm’s early success to hustling on LinkedIn and utilizing other cold outreach techniques. He said that consistent follow up, while walking the fine line between being persistent but not annoying, was the key.
Eventually, the firm began getting some traction. They were able to successfully convince some gaming founders that the Konvoy team was smart enough and also thinking about the industry through the correct lens. To their great relief, small checks started to trickle in.
“Obviously we started with small checks, $5K, then it was $25K. It really began to add from there, and we ended up raising $10.8 million for the first fund which closed in 2019.”
While the firm is now thriving, Jackson also spent time discussing the failures that helped him and the Konvoy team learn and develop along the way. Jackson spoke about a big aha moment for him; recognizing the need to evaluate startup teams and people versus just the technical aspects of a company.
He conceded that these skills don’t always come easily and that while some people have an innate ability, most need to learn through repetition.
“There were definitely a lot of failures that we’ve learned a lot of lessons from. One of the biggest takeaways was we were very focused on the technical solution, but there’s a lot more that goes into the success of a startup.”
For aspiring venture capitalists, Jackson advises students to really reflect on what their strengths and weaknesses are. Taking the lead in areas of strength and building in areas that need improvement are both important. But, it is also crucial to recognize areas that might be better handled by a teammate. Being flexible is vital to a firm’s success as well as to an individual’s.
Jackson also pointed out the need to be detail-oriented and that no aspect of a business should be deemed less important or ignored. Skills like managing, developing processes, and back office activities, while not glamorous, are integral to a firm’s success.
“I think managing the team and the back office stuff, might not necessarily be the cool, fun stuff, but it’s the critical stuff that makes a firm function. Figuring out how to do that effectively and efficiently is probably the most challenging part.”
Jackson cited his greatest personal accomplishment to be his relationship with his fiance. The two met while at NYU and have now been together for more than 10 years. His favorite memory from his time at NYU was frequenting a crepe shop with his now fiance called Crepe Away, where the two initially met.
Professionally, Jackson does not focus on an individual venture for a sense of achievement but rather likes to look at the big picture and the foundation he has built. He feels his biggest achievements stem from being part of a team and the trust he has helped build at Konvoy.
In Jackson’s free time he likes to work out, play basketball, go surfing, and spend time with family. He also admits to playing a lot of Counterstrike, not just for work-related reasons.
