Founder Festival: Jon Staenberg's Profile

Welcome, Jon Staenberg

Founder73

80th percentile

Investor120

97th percentile

Combined

#73 on Leaderboard

27-year venture investor with 400+ investments now pioneering search fund VC

• Professional:Profile Claimed Serial Founder Angel Investor Seed Focus Pre-Seed Focus

• Industries:Enterprise Software Consumer AI / ML

Credibility

this founder typical investor (50th pct)

Firm Standing · 98th percentile

Publicly identified as an angel investor by TechCrunch, with a long track record of seed-stage investing.
Active GP and fund manager at Agate Hound Fund, a fund-of-funds he founded and currently runs.
Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, a recognized VC firm founded in 1997–1998 with four funds raised.
Has approximately 27 years of investing experience, dating from the founding of Staenberg Venture Partners in 1997.

Relationship Matrix

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Founder score

95%38,403 LinkedIn followers — broad professional reach.
90%Current founder and CEO of Agate Hound Fund, a fund-of-funds for the search fund asset class.
80%Founder of Hand of God Wines, a boutique premium winery in Mendoza, Argentina, operating since 2006.
70%Also currently founding The Snowball VC, an A16Z Speedrun-focused investment fund.
55%Staenberg Venture Partners and other ventures had co-founders or partners involved.

Investor score

95%Publicly identified as an angel investor by TechCrunch, with a long track record of seed-stage investing.
92%Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, a recognized VC firm founded in 1997–1998 with four funds raised.
90%Active GP and fund manager at Agate Hound Fund, a fund-of-funds he founded and currently runs.
88%Has approximately 27 years of investing experience, dating from the founding of Staenberg Venture Partners in 1997.
80%Has made over 400 investments across Staenberg Venture Partners and angel activity, including Seagate, Splunk, DocuSign, Facebook, and Avalara.
65%Portfolio includes StubHub and SquareTrade, both of which were acquired for significant sums.
60%Portfolio company Bun was acquired (acquisition value undisclosed).

What you likely need

You're a seasoned multi-decade investor and serial fund founder with a portfolio spanning 400+ companies and a new focus on search funds and AI. The most valuable events for you right now are those that deepen your deal flow in AI and search fund ecosystems, and that connect you with LPs and co-investors who share your thesis. You'd also benefit from positioning yourself as the definitive voice on search fund investing, given your first-mover status with Agate Hound Fund.

Would you attend these IRL Festival events?

We will tune and customize your Founder Festival experience to make sure you get invited to the events that would be most valuable to you.

introsA GP dinner with other search fund investors and ETA practitioners to compare deal flow and co-investment opportunities in the search fund asset class.
Definitely
tacticalA roundtable with AI seed-stage founders and investors to pressure-test theses around Sakana.ai, Ollama, and similar portfolio bets.
Definitely
fundraisingA fundraising dinner with family office LPs and institutional allocators interested in alternative asset classes like search funds and fund-of-funds.
Definitely
introsA Seattle angel investor happy hour to reconnect with the Pacific Northwest startup ecosystem and surface new seed-stage deal flow.
Definitely
introsA Stanford GSB alumni founder dinner to leverage your network for warm intros to high-potential search fund operators and ETA entrepreneurs.
Definitely
positioningA positioning workshop with other A16Z Speedrun-adjacent fund managers to sharpen the narrative around The Snowball VC's differentiated thesis.
Definitely
tacticalAn office hours session with portfolio CEOs from your 400+ company portfolio to identify follow-on opportunities and provide strategic guidance.
Definitely