Josh Guttman is a New York City-based “technology entrepreneur turned venture capitalist.” His experience with investment firms and startups is extensive, and mostly focuses on digital media, software, mobile, and content discovery.
Guttman has been a Partner at SoftBank Capital since July, 2013. There, he has overseen investments in Reonomy and x.ai, among others. Prior to joining the team at SoftBank, Guttman served as Senior Vice President of Platform Sales at Outbrain, where he led business growth from 50 to 250 employees, and as Chief Executive Officer at Surphace (formerly Sphere), which was acquired by AOL.
Prior to his move to NYC to earn his MBA from Columbia Business School in 2004, Guttman held several roles in the Bay Area’s startup community, including Associate for Technology Investment Banking at SG Cowen & Co., and Associate for E*Offering’s Private Capital Group (E*Offering is the Investment Bank of E*Trade.).
His career began at San Francisco’s Robertson Stephens & Co., where he was an Analyst for Technology Investment Banking.
VC Firm
Partner at SoftBank Capital
Expertise Areas
Digital Media, Software, Mobile, Marketplace, Content Discovery
Selected Investment
x.ai
Sherpaa
Roenomy
Piictu
Blogs, Websites & Twitter
Twitter
LinkedIn
Blog
Angel Lis
Memorable Quotes
On joining SoftBank: “SoftBank Capital is a marquee brand with a no BS, founder-first philosophy that really resonates with me. I’m thrilled to be joining the super-talented team here in New York to help more company founders grow their businesses and make their dreams a reality.”
On native ads: “Good content doesn’t interrupt. In fact, it does the opposite, drawing you into a plot. It delivers value through entertainment, education, or some combination of both. Working our way down the list into the more nuanced characteristics, content can organically appear in places where it feels natural to discover. By entertaining or educating the reader and avoiding being overly promotional, it’s easy to engender reader trust. And it’s a natural way to tell a story.”
Advice on hiring: “Hiring is hard and bad hiring decisions are inevitable in the course of building most businesses. No company hires perfectly. With a typical one-year cliff, employees don’t vest any stock until the one-year anniversary of their start date. This makes it much easier to part ways with someone who is a bad cultural fit or underperforming member of the team after 4-6 months (usually long enough to know) without complicating matters by them walking away with meaningful stock in the business for a minimal amount of time with the company.”