Jeff Bonforte

Managing Partner

2019 - Current

Catapult Capital is a boutique private equity firm. We purchased Grindr in June 2020, operated the business for more than 2 years (me as CEO) and prepped the company to go public in Q4 2022 at over $2B. I help other investments such as JibJab. We specialize in consumer-facing tech deals, where our operational. product and management expertise are a key advantage to a deal's success.

Angel Investor and Advisor

2018

My family office investment company. Brown Dog investments include over 100 angel, venture and private equity investments including X.AI, Space X, Grindr, Front App, Liquid Death, and Dollar Shave Club.

Chief Executive Officer

2020 - 2022

Following our acquisition of Grindr in June 2020, I became the storied company's CEO. With my partners at Catapult Capital (and our partnership with San Vicente Capital), we worked to rebuild the team and virtually every system and process within the company from finance to support, product to privacy. We grew both revenue and EBITDA by over 80%. We raised the app ratings from 2-stars to 4.6+ stars. Raised the Glassdoor rating from employees from 18% CEO approval (my predecessor) to 93% approval. Our goal was to have the company growing and ready to be public by the end of 2022. We worked to revitalize the culture and the company's investments into the safety and wellness of the tens of millions of LGTBQ+ users in over 190 countries who depend on the service to connect them with the community across the globe.

Senior Vice President; Communications, Data and Research

2013 - 2018

Global responsibility for Mail, Messenger, Groups, Flickr, the data team and platform as well as the research team. I ran Search and Ad Products for a period of time, as well. I was executive sponsor for Women in Tech and neuro-diversity ERGs. I was executive lead for our Sunnyvale, Champaign and Israel offices. Played key role in Verizon messaging strategy as well as overall Yahoo product strategy. Led significant turnaround in Yahoo Mail in tech, user engagement, active users and revenue.

CEO

2008 - 2013

Vice President, Social Search

2007 - 2008

Social Search includes Y! Answers and Delicious. My role was to uncover ways to leverage social data to improve web search relevance and improve product personalization.

Vice President, Real Time Communications

2005 - 2007

Ran Messenger, Voice and Chat for Yahoo!

Founder

2001 - 2005

Starbox develops retail technology that allows customers to rate movies, books, wine, games and music right on the shelf. I handle all the product development, fundraising, marketing, and business development for the company.

President And Co-Founder

2003 - 2005

Report to CEO and Founder, Michael Robertson. Execute company strategy. Grow business. Close bus dev deals. Head marketing. And take out the trash (it is a startup, after all). Gizmo5 was acquired by Google and is now a part of Google Voice.

VP Marketing

2001 - 2002

Headed marketing and bus dev. Focused bus dev to rev deals. Focused marketing on smaller niche markets (rather than general consumer focus). Bundled product with higher margin software (increased margins 3x). Relaunced brand. Began international push (South America). Built and executed channels and distribution strategy.

CEO and Founder

1997 - 2001

i-drive is listed as idrive sometimes on Linkedin. Note: the domain and company name are no longer associated with the company I started. The trademark assets were acquired by a company in San Diego that now uses the brand.