Crunchbase

Jager was a long time Salesforce product executive but after 11 years there, he was looking to scratch his entrepreneurial itch. Steeped in all things sales cloud related, Jager had an idea for a new product for that market he wanted to build. One of the VCs that Jager pitched, Santi Subotovsky of Emergence Capital Partners, flipped the script and pitched Jager on the idea of becoming the CEO of Crunchbase, an asset that Santi was in the process of spinning out of AOL/Verizon. The rest is history as they say. Jager has been pushing the next generation of data + CRM in sales prospecting ever since.

Michael was crossing an intersection in SOMA when he bumped into Rajeev Batra of Mayfield and briefly shared the news on OMERS Ventures launching in the US. A few days later, Rajeev asked if OMERS Ventures would like to take a look at Crunchbase’s next financing. Everyone had heard of Crunchbase given its popularity, but very few actually understood what kind of business it was. Michael pulled in Eugene to help out even before Eugene’s official start date at OMERS Ventures and a couple of months later, OMERS Ventures led Crunchbase’s $30M Series C in October 2019, leaving Eugene thinking – wow, this venture thing is easy!