John Frankel | |
---|---|
Born | January 1961 (age 62–63) |
Education | Oxford University |
Occupation | Venture capitalist/Investor |
Employer | ff Venture Capital |
Known for | venture capital |
Website | www |
John F. Frankel (born January 1961), more commonly known as John Frankel, is a British venture capitalist, author and speaker.[1] Frankel is the founding partner at ff Venture Capital, a New York-based, seed stage investment firm.[citation needed]
John was born in January 1961 and grew up in London, England. He earned a Master of Arts from New College, Oxford where he studied Mathematics, Philosophy and Logic.
John Frankel started his career in London in 1982 working at Arthur Andersen as a Chartered Accountant. There he worked in the audit and insolvency division. He then worked at Goldman Sachs for the next 21 years in a variety of roles including financial management, technology development, and reengineering.[2][3] He established Goldman’s Cayman offshore administration business, their London global custody business, and reengineered their global prime brokerage business. He began angel investing in 1999.[2] In 2008 he founded Ff Venture Capital in New York City.[4]
Frankel has been an early investor and a director of many notable technology startups since 2008 including Parse.ly, UniKey, Klout, ThinkNear, Livefyre, Voxy, Centzy, Kohort, Phone.com, ThinkNear, Indiegogo, Plated, 500px, iClearpath, Contently and HowAboutWe.[5][6] He invested in UniKey Technologies after hearing about the founder's appearance on the television show Shark Tank.[7]
He was also one of the earliest investors in Quigo Technologies, which was purchased by AOL in December 2007[8] and in Cornerstone OnDemand which had a successful IPO in March 2011.
John Frankel is a frequent author and speaker both on television and at conferences and events.[9][10][11][12][13][14] He also serves as a Mentor with the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator program.[15] John Frankel is a Fellow Chartered Accountant of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.