John F. Frankel (born January 1961), more commonly known as John Frankel, is a British

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

ist, author and speaker. Frankel is the founding partner at

ff Venture Capital ff Venture Capital is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage and early-stage funding to technology companies. Headquartered in New York City, ff Venture Capital was founded by John Frankel and Alex Katz in 2008, who a ...

, a New York-based, seed stage investment firm.

Early life and education

John was born in January 1961 and grew up in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. He earned a Master of Arts from

New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at th ...

where he studied Mathematics, Philosophy and Logic.

Career

John Frankel started his career in London in 1982 working at

Arthur Andersen Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporat ...

as a Chartered Accountant. There he worked in the audit and insolvency division. He then worked at

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

for the next 21 years in a variety of roles including financial management, technology development, and reengineering."A New York VC Spotlight: John Frankel", AlleyWatch, April 30, 2013
/ref> He established Goldman’s Cayman offshore administration business, their London global custody business, and reengineered their global prime brokerage business. He began angel investing in 1999. In 2008 he founded

Ff Venture Capital ff Venture Capital is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage and early-stage funding to technology companies. Headquartered in New York City, ff Venture Capital was founded by John Frankel and Alex Katz in 2008, who a ...

in New York City. Frankel has been an early investor and a director of many notable technology startups since 2008 including Parse.ly, UniKey,

Klout Klout was a website and mobile app that used social media analytics to rate its users according to online social influence via the "Klout Score", which was a numerical value between 1 and 100. In determining the user score, Klout measured the size ...

, ThinkNear,

Livefyre Livefyre was a blog comment hosting service that pioneered real-time comment sections on the web. It offered live blogging, user profiles, link aggregation, web annotation, media uploads, and moderation tools. The company was based in San Fran ...

, Voxy, Centzy, Kohort, Phone.com, ThinkNear, Indiegogo,

Plated Plating is a surface covering in which a metal is deposited on a conductive surface. Plating has been done for hundreds of years; it is also critical for modern technology. Plating is used to decorate objects, for corrosion inhibition, to improv ...

500px 500px (pronounced "five hundred pixels") is a global online photo-sharing platform that is a subsidiary of Visual China Group. It is based in Toronto, Canada. It was co-founded by Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev on October 31, 2009. History E ...

, iClearpath, Contently and

HowAboutWe IAC Inc. is an American holding company that owns brands across 100 countries, mostly in mass media, media and Internet. The company is incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law and headquartered in New York City. Joey Levin, who previ ...

. He invested in UniKey Technologies after hearing about the founder's appearance on the television show

Shark Tank ''Shark Tank'' is an American business reality television series that premiered on August 9, 2009, on ABC.Hibberd, James (May 10, 201'Dancing,' 'Bachelor,' and a bigger 'Shark Tank' returning to ABCInsider TV. Retrieved June 24, 2012 The show i ...

. He was also one of the earliest investors in

Quigo Quigo Technologies, Inc. was a privately owned search engine marketing company headquartered in New York City. Founded in Israel in 2000 by Yaron Galai and Oded Itzhak, it developed proprietary search solutions for the online contextual advertisin ...

Technologies, which was purchased by

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

in December 2007 and in Cornerstone OnDemand which had a successful

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in March 2011. John Frankel is a frequent author and speaker both on television and at conferences and events. He also serves as a Mentor with the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator program. John Frankel is a Fellow Chartered Accountant of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

References

External links

ff Venture Capital
(archive) {{DEFAULTSORT:Frankel, John Living people Businesspeople from New York City Private equity and venture capital investors Angel investors American company founders American corporate directors 1961 births