What Makes Us Different

Building great companies is a craft that takes skill, tenacity and focus. The craft of entrepreneurship provides the namesake for our firm. 

The partners at Craft have all built successful companies as former Founder/CEOs. We know that the entrepreneurial journey is a long and arduous one, because we have lived it ourselves. This gives us a deep respect for founders and genuine empathy for their inevitable ups and downs. 

Before founding Craft, we also participated in many other entrepreneurial journeys as angel investors. We invested in some of our generation’s most iconic companies including Affirm, Airbnb, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Slack, SpaceX, Tesla, Trulia, Twilio, Twitter, Uber, and Warby Parker. 

We know that many of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs did not look like success stories when they started. They were the underdogs, the failures, renegades, non-conformists, outcasts, scrappy idealists that had a single minded quest that drove them to succeed.  Those were our beginnings too:

The PayPal IPO celebration involved chess games in the parking lot
David Sacks
After starting at McKinsey as a management consultant, David joined former classmate Peter Thiel at fledgling payments startup PayPal.
StubHub’s focus on sporting events and concerts made the company a fun place to work
Jeff Fluhr
After entering the “annual business plan competition” at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Fluhr dropped out to build StubHub.
Sky’s relentless focus on easy access and customer service made EarthLink the leading Internet provider
Sky Dayton
At age 23, frustrated with how difficult it was to get on the Internet, Sky founded EarthLink, which grew to serve millions of consumers.
Bill in 1998 with Eric Hahn, Remarq board member and former CTO of Netscape
Bill Lee
Working out of his co-founder’s mother’s garage in Marin County, Bill started RemarQ, a web 1.0 company that pioneered monetizing Internet discussions.
After a brief stint at McKinsey as a management consultant, David joined former classmate Peter Thiel at fledgling payments startup PayPal, now the public company $PYPL. Subsequently he founded Yammer, which was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion.
Working out of his co-founder’s parent’s garage in Marin County in 1996, Bill started Remarq, a web 1.0 company that pioneered monetizing Internet discussions until its 1999 acquisition for $285 million. Subsequently, Bill cofounded Social Concepts, a game incubator acquired by Big Fish Games -- Bill was on the Board of Big Fish until its acquisition for $885 million.
After entering the annual business plan competition at Stanford Business School, Jeff dropped out to build StubHub, now a multi-billion dollar division of eBay.
At age 23, frustrated with how difficult it was to get on the Internet, Sky founded EarthLink, which grew to serve millions of consumers. Sky went on to found a second unicorn, Boingo, to make wifi ubiquitous.

In a world where capital is abundant, our real value is advice and support. All of Craft's partners invest in areas they got to know well as entrepreneurs: 

  • David focuses on Consumer and SaaS based on his experience as founding-era COO of PayPal and Founder/CEO of Yammer. In particular, David looks for products that can go viral, either online or in the real world, and led the Series A of micro-mobility leader Bird. 
  • Jeff focuses on Marketplaces and E-commerce based on his experience as Founder/CEO of Stubhub. In particular, Jeff looks for hyper-vertical service marketplaces and led the Series A of Trusted Health, a nursing marketplace, and Seed round of Dray Alliance, an Uber-like marketplace for the drayage trucking industry.
  • Bill focuses on Emerging Areas based on his experience monetizing Internet discussions and virtual goods as Founder/CEO of Remarq and Social Concepts (now part of Big Fish Games).  He led Craft’s Series A investment into esports leader Cloud9 and virtual character universe Superplastic.
  • Sky focuses on Hard Tech based on his experiences as Founder/CEO of EarthLink and Boingo, and co-founder of CloudKitchens. Sky led Craft’s Series A investment in global connectivity provider Swarm Technologies. 
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Having created companies ourselves and led them to successful exits, we are now excited to help the next generation of entrepreneurs. The world needs innovators — the pioneers and idealists that can envision and create a better future. At Craft, our mission is to find this rare breed of greatness and help them win. We’re here to assist when it counts most — through the existential, make-or-break moments — when founders need expert advice from people who have done it before. We are Founders Backing Founders.

David, Bill, Jeff, and Sky

Our Offices

Craft Ventures is headquartered in
San Francisco with offices in Los Angeles and New York.

© CRAFT VENTURES