Welcoming Jack Arenas
We’re thrilled to announce that Jack Arenas has joined Founder Collective as the new Principal in our SoHo office. He represents the value and ethos of FC – he’s a builder at heart, lived the ups and downs of the founder journey and loves to work with founders across the tech industry.
Jack was most recently co-founder/CTO of Modern Life, an innovator in the life insurance industry. Before that, he was co-founder/CTO of Petal, an early mover at the intersection of AI and Fintech, which was acquired by Empower Finance. Prior to his entrepreneurial endeavors, he was a software engineer at TripleLift, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, and a software engineer at Amazon. He studied CS at Berkeley – but despite our east coast roots, we’ll let that slide;)
FC has a small investment team across Boston and NYC and Jack brings a ton of new strengths and experiences to our crew …
Founder funding founders
Our mission is to build the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. We hire operators first and foremost. We believe the business of venture capital can be learned, but the hard knocks of operating can only be learned by doing.
Jack has started two companies, both of which scaled to impressive levels. Petal served hundreds of thousands of customersand was just shy of nine-figures of revenue before being acquired. Modern Life was backed by some of the savviest investors in FinTech.
These experiences weren’t all smooth sailing. FinTech went in and out of fashion while he was building Petal and the company hit rough patches. As a result, Jack understands what it takes to make something people want, what high-stakes fundraising processes feel like, and how hard it is to bring a new enterprise into existence.
Founders Deserve a VC Who Speaks Their Language (Code)
We’ve been in touch with Jack for years, sometimes just catching up on his angel activities or asking for his perspective on a new dev tool. As an engineering leader he’s had to solve thorny compliance issues while still delivering seamless experiences to end users. He has designed data platforms and built teams. He’s shipped consumer products and B2B tools.
Founder > Angel > VC
Not only is Jack a supremely talented serial entrepreneur, but he’s also been actively seed investing for the last few years, and is connected to many entrepreneurs throughout the city, the Bay and beyond.
Jack is a triathlete, tennis player and recently married. More than anything, he’s a great human that embodies what we stand for at FC!
You can find Jack on X, LinkedIn, and many of Brooklyn’s hippest coffee shops. Please share his info with any talented entrepreneurs in the Tri-state area and beyond!
