Jonathan is the Founder of Torch Capital. A long time entrepreneur and investor, he has spent his career at the intersection of the media, technology and entertainment industries. He is the Co-Founder of digital media company InsideHook and has spent a decade as an active early stage investor and advisor to a number of New York and LA's to start-ups.
I’ve always been a builder, an entrepreneur at heart, and have focused my career on the intersection between consumers, media, and technology. I started in the music business, founding an artist management company in the entertainment industry, and got to work first hand with artists like John Legend, Dave Matthews Band, and The Nappy Roots. My career at that point was all about spotting talent early, nurturing their careers, and helping them find their voice and reach their audience. In some ways very similar to early stage VC!
After pursuing my MBA at Columbia Business School and spending a few years at McKinsey in their Media & Technology practice, I had the opportunity to work for former General Electric CEO, Jack Welch, helping him launch his premium online education venture.
I then went on to start my next venture, co-founding InsideHook, a men’s lifestyle digital media publisher. Through working closely on marketing and content partnerships with fast growing digitally native brands like Harry’s, Everlane, Trunk Club etc., I watched the evolution of the online consumer ecosystem. I also started seeding entrepreneurs, writing early angel checks into companies like Compass, Zocdoc, Sir Kensington’s, Acorns, Sweetgreen, and BounceExchange, working closely with the founders and learning by watching as they scaled their companies.
After building a portfolio of over 30 consumer companies, I realized my past experiences gave me a unique set of perspectives which enabled me to be very helpful and supportive to founders and companies as they grew and scaled. With this back-drop, I founded Torch Capital as the platform from which to formally institutionalize and further the investing I had done up to that point.
We look for entrepreneurs with a clear sense of mission alongside the determination, grit, focus and flexibility needed to lead a company both in the early stages and to take on the challenges of rapid growth and scale. Humility in founding teams is incredibly important to us – the ability to admit mistakes, take feedback, change course when needed, and create collaborative cultures is essential to recruiting and inspiring a culture of success, flexibility, and building a great all-around leadership team. Lastly, we ensure teams have a concrete vision of their brand alongside a deep understanding of their customers; how and where to acquire them; how to service them by consistently over-delivering to them beyond their expectations. Founders must be customer obsessed, framing key strategic considerations and product decisions through the lens of what will ultimately be best for that customer and how to grow with them.
We take a very hands-on approach with our companies and look to be an entrepreneur’s first call. We are laser focused on helping our companies identify, nurture, and scale their audiences during a crucial point of brand-building: between Seed and Series A. We are driven by the way consumers make decisions, and we guide our entrepreneurs to the right strategies, tools, and resources to build long-lasting, trusting relationships with their end consumer. Through our network of advisors, LPs, and operators, we've built an ecosystem of resources around marketing, product, design, positioning, media, messaging, PR, and sector strategy to build winners.
Our investment in Ro is a great example of this framework: we put a comparatively small check into Ro's series A, but from that moment on we worked closely with the Ro team on a few areas which we could be helpful; from PR to media buying, assisting in analyzing key consumer KPIs, and making a some key introductions across multiple business lines. We gained the team's trust and ended up leading their series B round. We are now one of the largest shareholders in the business, and it started with a small check and our desire to help them navigate through their growth. We are incredibly proud to work with teams like Ro.
Come prepared and know your key KPI's inside and out. A founder who deeply understands which key metrics are driving their business understands what is vital for sustainable growth.
Be able to articulate your business and mission and the pain points you are solving in a clear, simple sentence or two.
Sell us on your mission and the reason your business is a need-to-have, not a nice-to-have. We invest in founders who are solving true consumer pain points through best-in-class products and services.
Having previous experience building a company from its inception to operating it through its lifecycle is integral to supporting early-stage entrepreneurs. It’s imperative that one be able to relate to the trials and tribulations facing an entrepreneur – comparing their roadblocks to ones you have faced yourself. Having insight into the future obstacles an entrepreneur may not yet foresee is incredibly powerful when helping them navigate the ever-changing challenges of growing a business. At times entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know, and I want to help them through my breadth of experience and eagle’s-eye view of the consumer landscape. These distinct insights allow me as an investor to help my entrepreneurs think long-term and look beyond the day-to-day growing pains of launching and running their company.
Having previous experience building a company from its inception to operating it through its lifecycle is integral to supporting early-stage entrepreneurs. It’s imperative that one be able to relate to the trials and tribulations facing an entrepreneur – comparing their roadblocks to ones you have faced yourself. Having insight into the future obstacles an entrepreneur may not yet foresee is incredibly powerful when helping them navigate the ever-changing challenges of growing a business. At times entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know, and I want to help them through my breadth of experience and eagle’s-eye view of the consumer landscape. These distinct insights allow me as an investor to help my entrepreneurs think long-term and look beyond the day-to-day growing pains of launching and running their company.
My media and entertainment background also shapes my outlook a lot. Brand and positioning matters now more than ever as consumer brands increasingly have to fight through the noise to reach their target audience.
New York has been the place with the most energy and vibrancy and diversity of people. I love that this city is filled with both entrepreneurs and consumers from vastly disparate backgrounds across a variety of sectors. New York is not an industry specific city; it breeds entrepreneurs from across the globe with expertise in every industry imaginable. This also creates a diverse entrepreneurial landscape generating best-in-class experiences for every subset of consumer.
I also love that NYC is emblematic of resiliency. I've been here through 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and now COVID-19. After each crisis, we saw a wave of innovation and birth of industry-changing companies for businesses and consumers. COVID-19 will fundamentally change how people live, work and consume, and NYC is poised to capitalize on this ever-changing landscape. I remain long New York.
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