Karl Jacob is a four-time entrepreneur and has been building and advising companies for the last 14 years. He also worked as a manager at Sun Microsystems and an executive at Microsoft. In his career, Jacob raised over $200 million from prestigious investors like Amerindo, Microsoft, eBay, Integral Partners, Norwest Ventures, Bay Partners, Benchmark Capital, Deutsche Bank, Ignition Partners, Vulcan Ventures and others. He started four companies from no revenue to significant revenues or being acquired. One of his companies, Dimension X, was acquired by Microsoft in 1997; and another, Keen (now Ingenio), was acquired by AT&T in 2007. Companies with Jacob as CEO have generated over $300 million in returns to investors and over $150 million in revenue per year. He has received numerous awards, including being named one of BusinessWeek’s top ten up-and-comers.
Jacob is currently the CEO and Founder of Coveroo, which enables consumers to personalize their cell phones, MP3 players and other personal electronics with their favorite artwork and designs. Previously, he took Cloudmark from no revenue and $50,000 in investment to $16 million in investment and millions in revenue. Prior to this, Jacob joined Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence and was charged with creating the “next big thing,” which ended up being Keen, where he was CEO and President until May of 2002. While at Keen, Jacob led the company to be credited as one of the fastest growing ecommerce companies in history and recognized by Fortune as a Cool Company.
Jacob has advised and been a board member at several companies including Facebook, Dimension X, Keen, Cloudmark, IMMI, Protector USA and REAL Kiteboarding. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from University of Southern California, where he sits on the school’s board of counselors for the School of Engineering.
| Company | Date | Round | Size | Participants |
| Curebit | 1/12 | Unattributed | $1.2M | 6 |
| Flotype | 1/12 | Seed | $1.4M | 10 |
| Airtime | 10/11 | Series A | $8.3M | 14 |
| Inporia | 5/11 | Seed | $1.25M | 10 |
| NoiseToys | 5/11 | Seed | $1.2M | 7 |
| Skillshare | 5/11 | Angel | $550k | 9 |
| DoubleDutch | 4/11 | Seed | $1.2M | 12 |
| Everlane | 4/11 | Seed | $1.1M | 10 |
| Offline Labs | 3/11 | Seed | $1M | 11 |
| Yobongo | 3/11 | Seed | $1.35M | 10 |
| Thumb | 3/11 | Angel | $1.2M | 8 |
| MemSQL | 3/11 | Seed | $2.1M | 15 |
| Path | 11/10 | Angel | $2.5M | 27 |
| Formative Labs | 10/10 | Angel | 5 | |
| LearnBoost | 7/10 | Angel | $975k | 10 |
| Coveroo | 7/10 | Series B | $2.3M | 3 |
| HealthTap | 1/10 | Angel | 7 | |
| Coveroo | 8/09 | Series A | $1.5M | 5 |
