This profile has not been claimed and data may not be accurate.
14th percentile
96th percentile
AIX Ventures co-founder and GP whose bets include Perplexity and Windsurf
Credibility
Experience · 80th percentile
- AIX Ventures was founded in approximately 2021, giving Shaun Johnson roughly 4 years of investing experience at the firm, plus earlier ecosystem and accelerator roles dating to at least 2012.
Relationship Matrix
Founder score
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)Co-founded AIX Ventures, a venture capital firm, making him a past founder of that firm (he has since departed).
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)Past co-founder of Startup Institute, where he served from 2012 to 2016.
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)AIX Ventures had co-founders, including Richard Socher and Shaun Johnson.
Investor score
- 97%Probability of being accurate (97%)Active GP and fund manager at AIX Ventures, confirmed as a named related person on multiple SEC Form D pooled investment fund filings.
- 92%Probability of being accurate (92%)Partner and Founding Partner at AIX Ventures, a recognized venture capital firm with a public deal record backing AI startups including Perplexity, Windsurf, and Ideogram.
- 88%Probability of being accurate (88%)Publicly identified as an angel investor and early-stage VC investor through his role at AIX Ventures and NFX Signal profile.
- 80%Probability of being accurate (80%)AIX Ventures portfolio includes Perplexity AI, a still-private company valued above $1B, qualifying as a portfolio unicorn.
- 72%Probability of being accurate (72%)NFX Signal lists Shaun Johnson's portfolio at approximately 24 total investments across seed-stage AI, logistics, and e-commerce companies.
- 65%Probability of being accurate (65%)AIX Ventures was founded in approximately 2021, giving Shaun Johnson roughly 4 years of investing experience at the firm, plus earlier ecosystem and accelerator roles dating to at least 2012.
What you likely need
You're at a pivotal transition moment — post-AIX, with real portfolio wins in Perplexity and Windsurf that the market hasn't fully heard from you yet. The highest-leverage Festival events for you right now are rooms where you can publicly crystallize your AI investment thesis, get in front of LPs and co-investors who can accelerate a new fund or syndicate, and activate your NYC connector role to bridge coasts. You'll get the most out of intimate dinners and roundtables where your pattern recognition on early-stage AI gets heard by the right founders and capital allocators.
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.
- positioningA dinner for early Perplexity and Windsurf investors and operators to swap notes on what early AI infrastructure bets look like before the market catches on — and sharpen a public thesis you can own
- fundraisingA roundtable with active AngelList syndicate leads and emerging solo GPs to map out the fastest path from post-fund departure to independent capital deployment
- introsA cross-coast intro dinner pairing NYC-based seed-stage founders from your NY Tech Alliance network with West Coast seed and Series A investors from your AIX-era relationships
- positioningA happy hour for Stellar Development Foundation advisors and Web3-adjacent founders to surface deal flow and position your operator re-entry as a signal, not a detour
- positioningA dinner for founders and operators who have built talent pipelines or coding schools — Startup Institute, General Assembly, Flatiron alumni circles — to amplify your ecosystem-builder credential beyond pure VC identity
- fundraisingAn office hours session pairing emerging GPs and re-launching fund managers with active family office and institutional LP scouts who back sub-$100M vehicles
- tacticalA meetup for NFX Signal-listed seed investors to compare profile optimization tactics and warm up as a discovery surface for founders actively searching for their first check
- positioningA small dinner with tech journalists and newsletter writers covering AI investing — Newcomer, The Information, Axios Pro — where you can go on record about what you saw early in Perplexity and Windsurf