Jerry Neumann

Bio

Jerry Neumann is a veteran venture investor, investing in enterprise software startups from New York City. He also teaches entrepreneurship at Columbia University’s engineering school. He has been called one of New York’s top early stage investors by Business Insider, a “known quantity” by the New York Observer, and “responsible-sounding” by the Wall Street Journal. Jerry grew up in NJ and went to Columbia for his bachelor's and master's in electrical engineering. His first job was as an engineer at IBM, where he designed a very small part of the CP microcode execution engine for the S/390 series of mainframes. He left to get his master's in business from NYU. After school he went to work for Deloitte & Touche Consulting, ending up in their Restructuring Services Group. He joined Prodigy Services in 1995, and was part of the senior management team that successfully transformed Prodigy from a walled garden online service to an internet-centric ISP and portal. Jerry left Prodigy to run Omnicom Group's internet division/corporate venture capital arm, Communicade. Communicade seed funded the best early interactive agencies, including Razorfish, Agency.com, Organic Interactive, Red Sky, and others. In 2001, Jerry formed Seneca Investments and acquired the Communicade portfolio from Omnicom. Seneca rode out the downturn and emerged with several great companies, including the newly privatized Agency.com and Organic (later acquired by Omnicom), Taleo (IPOd), Oyster Interactive (acquired by FramFab), Healthology (acquired by iVillage), eMedicine (acquired by WebMD), and Domain (acquired by Melbourne IT). Jerry then co-founded Root Markets, and helped pioneer the idea of applying the techniques and tools of financial markets to marketing services. Backed by First Round Capital, the Chicago Board of Trade, and other top-notch investors, but way ahead of its time, Root did not survive the collapse of the mortgage markets. Jerry started Neu Venture Capital in 2008.