Jim Jonassen
Founder, JJ&A Venture Search
Jim founded Jim Jonassen & Assoc. Venture Search in late 2006. Prior to JJ&A, Jim built two executive search firms and two successful software companies. Jim founded software company Micro J Systems in ’87 where he still serves as Chairman, and he co-founded PeopleMover in ’97, merging it with Opus360 just prior to its IPO in 2000. Jim co-founded two other search firms, Palo Alto based Riviera Partners in ’01 and The Larkin Group in ’93. Working with then Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, Jim co-founded the Digital Coast Roundtable and launched LAwNMoweR – the Los Angeles New Media Roundtable in the mid ’90s. He was also a talent scout for America Online’s AOL Greenhouse incubator and venture fund. Accolades include being named the 1999 Software Entrepreneur of the Year by the Software Council of Southern California. In addition, he was named three-times to the “Top 25 People in High Technology” by the Los Angeles Business Journal. Jim is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana. He is a member of the Board of the Santa Monica Boy’s & Girl’s Club and has been a Big Brother since ’92.
Content & Articles by Jim Jonassen
Lessons From Building An AI-Native Startup with Octagos Health
In this Mucker Growth Series session, we invited friends from one of our portfolio companies Haley Chute, CPO & CMO, and Harpreet Marwaha, COO & CFO of Octagos Health, to...
How To Craft Your Website Messaging & Positioning as a Startup
In this Mucker Growth Series session, Anthony Pierri, co-founder of FletchPMM, walks through how to craft website messaging and positioning as a startup. FletchPMM is a consultancy that has worked...
2026 New York Tech Week Recap of Mucker Sessions
Mucker Capital went to New York Tech Week to host sessions for founders, operators, and builders thinking through how AI is changing product, growth, and search. Among the sessions were:...
Closing Enterprise Deals in Founder-Led Sales as a Startup
In our recent Mucker Growth Series session, I invited David Mackay, Managing Director at D9Y and one of our operating experts at Mucker, to talk about closing enterprise deals in...
The 10 Security Gaps That Plague Startups Before Their A Round
A NOTE ON SEVERITY Not every item on this list carries the same level of risk. Some are the kind of finding that stops a deal. Others are serious but...
Community-Led Growth for Startups: Why Most Communities Fail and How to Build One That Actually Works
In our recent Mucker Growth Series session, I invited Sam Jacobs — founder and CEO of Pavilion — to talk about community-led growth: what it actually means, why most communities...