More About Jeff
Jeff Jordan is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he serves on the boards of Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB), Codi, Incredible Health, Infinite Athlete, Foodology, Lookout, OfferUp, PrismsVR, Shef, and Wonderschool. He led the firm’s early investments in and served on the boards of Accolade (previously: NASDAQ:ACCD), Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) and Instacart (NASDAQ: CART).
He was previously CEO and then executive chairman of OpenTable, where he led the company during a period of accelerated domestic and international growth and oversaw its initial public offering during one of the longest tech IPO droughts in recent history. Prior to OpenTable, Jeff was Senior Vice President and General Manager of eBay North America where he oversaw eBay’s early growth into one of the Internet’s leading commerce brands. In this role, he drove the successful acquisitions of PayPal and Half.com and went on to become President of PayPal, where he was responsible for establishing the company as the global standard for online payments.
Before joining eBay, Jeff was chief financial officer of Hollywood Entertainment and president of Reel.com. He also worked as Senior Vice President of finance for The Disney Stores at The Walt Disney Company, and prior held various positions at the Boston Consulting Group.
Jeff holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a BA in Political Science and Psychology from Amherst College. Jeff is an active mentor and leader in the Bay Area community. He serves on the boards of the DAPER Investment Fund, The GSB Trust, and the Stanford School of Engineering Advisory Council. He also runs a regular basketball game that connects young people and established tech industry vets.
In the news:
Fortune: Lessons from the VC Who’s Seen it all Before
How Jeff Jordan is applying what he learned during his time at Disney, eBay, and OpenTable to help founders at Airbnb, Pinterest, and Instacart
Latest Content
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In this episode, we revisit a conversation with Jeff Jordan, former CEO of OpenTable, and J.D. Moriarty, the former Head Managing Director and Head of Equity Capital Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
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Jeff Jordan reminisces about his decision to back the start-up Instacart, as the grocery giant prepares to go public.
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While it can be easy to see the CFO as a “scorekeeper,” a great CFO actually puts points on the board by strategically and opportunistically growing your company.
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a16z General Partner Jeff Jordan writes about his 12 years at the venture capital firm and what he's planning to do next.
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If you’ve run a high-growth company, you know that office space decisions are a nightmare. You are forced to anchor your growth assumption in cement--literally--for a typical lease term of seven years.
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It seems like investors are especially obsessed with the psychology of decision making — high stakes, after all — but all kinds of decisions, whether in life or business — like dating, product management, what to eat or watch on Netflix — are an “investment portfolio” of decisions… even if you sometimes feel like you’re making one big decision at a time (like, say, marriage or what product to develop next or who to hire). Obviously, not all decisions are equal; in fact, sometimes we don’t even have to spend any time deciding. So how do we know which decisions to apply a robust decision process too, which ones not to? What are the strategies, mindsets, tools to help us decide? How can we operationalize a good decision process and decision hygiene into our teams and organizations? After all, we’re tribal creatures — our opinions are infectious (for better and for worse) — so how do we convey vs. convince, and not necessarily agree but inform to decide? Especially given common pitfalls (resulting, hindsight bias, etc.), and “the paradox of experience”, including even (and more so) winning vs. losing. Decision expert (and leading poker player) Annie Duke comes back on the a16z Podcast — after our first conversation with her for Thinking in Bets, which focused mainly on WHY our decision making gets so frustrated — to talk about her new book, which picks up where the last left off, on HOW to Decide: Simple Tools for Better Choices. In conversation with a16z managing partner Jeff Jordan (and former CEO of OpenTable and former GM of eBay among other things) — so, from all sides of investing, operating, life — Annie shares tips for decision makers of all kinds making decisions under uncertainty… really, all of us.
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The pace of technology innovation in the restaurant industry has been accelerating in recent years. When it was founded a couple of decades ago, OpenTable was one of the first Internet companies to provide technology to...
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Early in the COVID pandemic, my colleague D’Arcy Coolican and I penned “COVID-19 and the Great Rehiring”. The premise of the piece was that the magnitude of the disruption to employment during the pandemic would require...
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There's been a false dichotomy in technology and management lore over the past decade, between "brain" and "brawn", digital and physical, independence and interdependence, software culture versus industrial culture… Whether you're an early startup or a Fortune 500 company, today's leaders have to think completely differently, in terms of ecosystems; and they're often in the position of having to influence but not have control. So where and when to partner, when to go it alone?
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I love digital marketplace businesses! If you track my career in my two plus decades in Silicon Valley, you’ll see a lot of them. I've been an operator and/or investor in the A to Z of marketplace companies across time a...
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The a16z Marketplace 100 series explores the companies and trends behind largest and fastest-growing marketplace companies. See more at a16z.com/marketplace-100.
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Marketplaces encompass a huge swath of services we use every day, from grocery delivery to online shopping to remote learning. How have marketplace dynamics changed since pre-pandemic, and what COVID-propelled consumer behaviors will persist into 2021 and beyond? In this episode, we discuss the most promising companies and categories on the rise, based on data from the Marketplace 100, a ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. The report provides rich fodder for looking ahead at the future of marketplaces: Which companies are on a tear and which are locked in close competition? Which marketplace categories are poised for growth, and which may make a comeback? Host Lauren Murrow is joined by a16z consumer team partners Connie Chan, D’Arcy Coolican, Jeff Jordan, and Sriram Krishnan.
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We’ve written extensively about the unbundling trend: large, horizontal platforms like eBay or Craigslist getting challenged by startups that better serve the specific needs of a vertical on that incumbent platform.
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From gaming to edtech, marketplaces to social+, these were the most-read consumer tech posts of the year.
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Social Strikes Back is a series exploring the next generation of social networks and how they're shaping the future of consumer tech. See more at a16z.com/social-strikes-back.
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All kinds of decisions, whether in life or business -- like marriage product management, what to eat or watch -- are a portfolio of investments. And obviously, not all decisions are equal; in fact, sometimes we don't even have to spend any time deciding. So how do we know which decisions to spend time on, which ones not to? What are the strategies, mindsets, tools to help us decide? How can we operationalize good decision hygiene into our teams and organizations? We cover all this and more in this early podcast with Annie Duke for her new book, How to Decide.
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Looking for a job in the 2020s will be very different from looking for a job in the 2000s, or even the 2010s. In this new era of reduced budgets, open-ended hiring freezes, and a shape-shifting workforce of career change...
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Today’s episode is about a practical application of crypto — namely, the way it can “tokenize” fandom. More broadly, it’s about fan engagement, and the increasingly blurred lines between sports, culture and tech.
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More than 25 million Americans were laid off in April, and that’s just the official count. Unofficially, some economists estimate that more than 52 percent of Americans under the age of 45 have lost jobs, hours, or been...
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What financial statements and KPIs do (and don’t) tell you and how you can use them to chart a course through tough times.
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Every company tracks certain success metrics—commonly accepted criteria for the health of a business. But when it comes to marketplaces, those measurements can often be imprecisely defined or muddled in their interpretat...
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What happens as marketplaces and other platforms evolve over time, and different kinds of users also join over time? After user acquisition, it's all about user retention and engagement. So what are the key metrics?
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As my partner, Marc Andreessen, often says, “there are no bad ideas in tech, only bad timing.” This can sound a tad crazy at face value, but let me elaborate.
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This is the 15th episode of 16 Minutes, our news show where we cover the top headlines, the a16z Podcast way: what’s real / what’s hype; what's interesting from our vantage point in tech.
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For most of us, nurses are essentially the face of the healthcare system. In this episode, we take a look at the role of that unsung hero of healthcare, the nurse, from an industry level.
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Healthcare jobs are the largest category of employment in the US, with ~18 million workers. In fact, it accounts for nearly 13% of jobs in the US—and is adding jobs faster than in any other category, at ~2% annual growt...
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One of the holy grails in the newco world is to build out a digital platform that successfully serves the needs of a broad number of adjacent verticals, and become the definitive platform in its space. We know the now-ca...
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Los amplios verticales horizontales eventualmente se rompen. Lo que antes era demasiado pequeño como para preocuparle a un mercado es un lugar muy interesante para una empresa nueva independiente. Una nueva ola de innovación comienza a hincharse, recogiendo las verticales convincentes que los nuevos jugadores horizontales no pueden satisfacer.
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This is episode #5 of our new show, 16 Minutes, where we quickly cover recent headlines of the week, the a16z way -- why they're in the news; why they matter from our vantage point in tech -- and share our experts' views on these trends as well.
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Pinterest went public today!
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The goal of every new technology company is to achieve a hyper-growth state. Once you unlock that magic moment, though, how do you actually sustain that rate of growth? The best entrepreneurs start doing something today...
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It's clear that all kinds of commerce companies and consumer products have been disrupted -- or enabled -- by tech. Yet for certain categories, like consumer packaged goods (CPG), it seems like tech hasn't changed things...
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For decades, the increasing value of sports teams, rights, licenses and more have been fueled by sports media. But dollars follow eyeballs, and eyeballs -- at least on the traditional broadcast -- are going elsewhere. "I...
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The "death of retail" in the face of e-commerce and tech disruption is a very real phenomenon, but what about the flip side of that story -- that is, retail thriving despite all odds?
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While important debates about the long-term impact of new technologies on jobs play out, I’ve had a front row seat to a set of companies where new technologies have immediately created new streams of income for millions...
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This episode of the a16z Podcast -- one of two in a series -- focuses on the user acquisition aspect of growth, followed by engagement and retention in the next episode. Featuring a16z general partners Andrew Chen and Jeff Jordan, in conversation with Sonal Chokshi, the discussion also covers the nuances of paid vs. organic marketing (and the perils of blended CAC); the role of network effects; where does customer lifetime value (LTV) come in; and much more. Because at the end of the day, businesses don't grow themselves...
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Once you have users, how do you keep them engaged, retain them, and even "resurrect" or re-engage them? That's the focus of this episode of the a16z Podcast, which continues our series on the basics of growth from user acquisition to engagement and retention -- covering, as always, key metrics and how to think about them. Especially as many products and platforms evolve over time, so do the users, some of whom may even use the product in different ways... so what does that mean for engagement, and how can startups analyze their users? "Show me the cohorts!" may be the new "show me the money"... Featuring a16z general partners Andrew Chen and Jeff Jordan, in conversation with Sonal Chokshi, the discussion also covers everything from how network effects come in to play (is there really a magic number or "aha" moment for a product?) to who are the power users (and the power user curve for measuring, finding, and retaining them). Because at the end of the day, you don't want a leaky bucket that you're constantly trying to fill up. That doesn't work, and definitely won't scale.
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The professional sports business is at a crossroads.
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NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman runs one of the world's largest financial services companies, including the NASDAQ stock exchange that's home to more than 3,500 listed companies. They were also the creator of the world's first...
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A founder’s perspective on what leaders should do starting a year or two out, in rough chronological order.
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Jeff Jordan, JD Moriarty, Sonal ChokshiThere are the things that you carefully plan — the who (the bankers); the what (the pricing); and the when. But then there are the things that you don’t plan: like a financial crisis.
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I love marketplace businesses. I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best digital marketplace businesses in the world, both as an operator -- for eBay and OpenTable -- and as an investor, supporting the effo...
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In a startup, the chief marketing officer (CMO) is usually one of two critical positions responsible for driving growth, alongside the head of sales. Essentially, CMOs are responsible for — and held accountable for metri...
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Many CEOs think the chief financial officer (CFO) is a utility position… and they’re dead wrong. It’s easy to see the CFO as a glorified “scorekeeper” reporting arrears on things like revenue, expenses, profit/losses, an...
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An aerospace engineer who worked for NASA for over 40 years, Dr. Christine Darden is one of the mathematicians that the book and movie Hidden Figures was based on. Darden eventually would lead the sonic boom team, going...
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Many industries wrestle with the “last mile” problem, where it’s often cost prohibitive to connect the final leg of something -- like fiber optic cable or package delivery -- beyond some central hub to individual homes a...
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watch time: 20 minutes
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You or someone in your family most likely has experienced dealing with too many healthcare providers at once: whether it’s a child getting injured while on the road for an away soccer game; trying to manage going to the...
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Just as "social networking" is a bland term that doesn't really capture the layers of what happens underneath (and on top of) social networking platforms, "crowdfunding" is a broader phenomenon than what the term and too...
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My first corporate job after graduating from college was as an “employee benefits consultant” at Wausau Insurance companies. It wasn’t a particularly inspiring job, but I was lucky to get this job as I had graduated duri...
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watch time: 21 minutes
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One of the biggest misconceptions around network effects (which are one of the key dynamics behind many successful and highly defensible software companies) is confusing growth with engagement. So how does one tell the d...
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The NFL has descended upon Silicon Valley for Superbowl 50, and a16z was fortunate to have 30 of the world’s best football players post-up at the firm to talk about the intersection between the world of professional spor...
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You know how talented Andre Iguodala is as a basketball player. You may not know that he signed with the Warriors in part to be near Silicon Valley and the tech scene. Iguodala knows tech, and in a conversation with a16z...
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Newspapers used to earn much of their revenue from classified advertising. This abruptly came to an end in the early 2000s, largely as a result of Craigslist: They captured users on the web before the newspapers had a ch...