Jay is a Principal at Launch Capital, one of the pioneers of seed-stage investing firms. They often write the check to startups that they invest in. Some of their big consumer wins include Spotify and Snap.

Jay has worked at Launch since 2018 and also has experience working in corporate VC and Techstars. He's written some great articles and thought-provoking Twitter updates on venture capital and startups. You can follow him @jaykapoornyc and on Medium.

In this episode, you will learn the following - 

1. Jay's background and how he became passionate about early investing? The challenges when it comes to conducting due diligence on consumer-facing businesses. A day in the life working with founders at Techstars. 

2. How he approaches decision-making processes and establishing trust amongst founders in their decision-making abilities.

3. How investor attitudes towards D2C companies changed over the past few years? How successful founders are adapting to increasing online marketing customer acquisition costs and continue to scale? 

4. What are some of the reasons why a company in an accelerator is not able to raise a seed round or progress to the next phase of fundraising? A specific metric that is insightful that other investors might gloss over when evaluating startups?

5. One company that he either invested in or worked with that he's proud of? One company that he wished he invested in?

A book that has impacted Jay both professionally and personally is Daniel Pink's "To Sell Is Human".