We are trying something new here at Juxtapose and as part of our usual CEO partnership announcement, we are excited to share more about that new initiative.

Building on our tried-and-true process of deep internal work, where we often invest years working to vet a business opportunity, perform user and product research, and determine the right partnership with an entrepreneurial operator, we are now introducing a pathway to selectively bring in other investors or strategic institutions at even earlier stages of our process.

We are calling these partnership-driven opportunities Co-Builds.

These Co-Builds not only stay true to our core philosophical principle — doing few things and doing them well — but in specific cases (and when done right) they truly bring additional acceleration and advantage to our traditional company-inception process. Our Co-Builds, like everything we traditionally dedicate time to, are focused on large-market spaces. They also similarly benefit from our deep expertise in user research and, as a matter of principle, will continue to only be brought to life in conjunction with a world-class entrepreneurial operator.

Today, we are excited to announce both our first Co-Build partner and the amazing entrepreneurial operator with whom we are working to jointly found the company.

Our inaugural Co-Build partner is Obvious Ventures. We have had a long-standing relationship with the senior-most team at Obvious, in particular managing director James Joaquin, a co-founder of the firm. Over his thirty-plus year career, James has assembled a unique track record and blend of experiences, not only investing in high-growth ventures but also in consumer-oriented incubation. Additionally, he has operated as a CEO for over a decade.

Obvious Ventures’ mutual conviction in the new venture’s opportunity space, and our complementary experiences as firms, was palpable from the initial conversation about jointly partnering here. We are thankful for the commitment and resources that James and Obvious Ventures have already invested to date.

We are also proud to announce that, after a year-long process of mutual vetting and establishing a working relationship, we have joined forces with Ken Chahine as the founding CEO partner for this new venture.

Dr. Ken Chahine is the type of entrepreneurial operator with whom we love working: a two time CEO with decades of operating experience, including his career-defining leadership role building Ancestry DNA and growing Ancestry.com. As the founder and founding general manager of Ancestry DNA, Ken built the consumer-meets-science business from scratch, taking it from zero to eventually the largest business unit and most profitable segment in the company. Ken’s unique depth of experience around healthtech product development combines scientific discovery, data and AI, as well as delightful consumer experiences, and is an ideal fit for this next opportunity.

Ken has also built and managed large multi-functional teams, and has a track record of scaling new businesses in deeply operationally complex environments: he developed the largest genomic lab testing supply chain and biorepository (that at its peak had a throughput of over 11 million samples a year), which led to a business that approached serving 10 percent of the entire United States population. Ken’s background as a scientist — with a doctorate at that! — and his legal training also serve him well in managing and building science-oriented businesses in highly regulated spaces.

We are honored to be partnering with Ken on this latest venture that sits at the juncture of telemedicine, the allergy value chain, and cutting-edge biology research. More to be shared on the venture in short order, but in the meantime: Welcome to the Juxtapose family Ken, James and the Obvious Ventures team. We are thrilled to be co-building here together!

We are excited to announce that we are partnering with John Clendening — a several time CEO, public company executive and board member — to build an ambitious new technology business in the financial services sector.

We are honored to be partnering with John. At Juxtapose we work methodically and slowly, choosing to work on a few things and do them well. One of the most important and time-intensive decisions we make revolves around which CEO to partner with. It is why we take over forty steps, and months of diligence, before we select our entrepreneur-partner. Our relationship with John has been a testament to that process which started early in 2020, during the social isolation driven by COVID. We are excited to complete our search and for him to helm our seventh company here at Juxtapose.

John brings over two decades of CEO and President experience in innovative financial services. He most recently served as CEO of Blucora (NASDAQ: BCOR), a publicly traded technology-driven financial services firm offering tax-smart wealth management outcomes for consumers, where he helped to steer the company into new products and to financial success. During his tenure, John delivered double-digit annual growth in revenue and profitability, and drove a total Stock Return in the top 3% of the Russell 2000. The business led various key product and technology innovations in the space, including software-driven tax alpha across investing accounts and first-in-kind forward-looking digital optimization.

Prior to Blucora, John spent over a decade as one of the senior most leaders at Charles Schwab. As President and co-Head of Charles Schwab’s US and International retail division, John played a leading role in transforming the firm from a transactional, reactive-service model into the leading omni-channel wealth manager, with modern digital experiences and an industry-leading suite of advisory services. John led a team of over 5,000 employees, driving 70% profit growth over his time at the helm. John also served as CEO of Schwab Bank and on the bank’s Board of Directors. John’s career prior to Schwab began with senior roles in large companies and start-ups, including eMac Digital, living.com, First Union Bank, Wells Fargo, and The Coca-Cola Company.

John currently serves on the Board of Silicon Valley Bank Financial Group (NASDAQ: SIVB), the preeminent banker to the global innovation economy, and Feed The Children, a global NGO. His prior board service includes Betterment, the largest independent Robo-advisor in the US. John earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics from Northwestern University.

The company John is partnering with us to build is currently in stealth mode. Its core thesis is something both John and Juxtapose believe in and are energized about: the ability to deliver better outcomes for clients by creating products and services that are personalized, remarkably comprehensive, and purpose-built, especially in a world where scaled platforms emphasize one-size-fits-all models that are stalled and stuck in the past.

Welcome to the Juxtapose family John!

Like many other organizations focused on disruptive innovation over the last decade, here at Juxtapose we have identified significant white space in the healthcare ecosystem. In particular, we believe there’s enormous potential to design companies at the intersection of healthcare and consumer categories. In that overlap we’ve found that consumers are looking for better experiences and companies that serve them with more transparency, agency, and accessibility. One driving thesis is the ability of new ventures to transcend and transform separate categories within healthcare — think having to see multiple specialists for various needs — into one offering that better fits a modern consumer’s needs and life stages.

Modern Age is a model example of that thesis: the company has the opportunity to change a siloed healthcare paradigm by providing services that specifically address aging, an overarching category with over $130B of annual spend. Over time, Modern Age will provide everything from metabolic and hormone health, bone health, facial skincare, and dermatology. Modern Age aspires to offer a deeply personalized experience, one that more realistically fits with how consumers think about their lives and health, and how they want to care for both.

Given the level of innovation and operational expertise required to pull this off, we are excited to have found a world-class partner like Melissa. We believe there is no one better equipped to transform the way we age, and the way we feel about aging, especially given her exceptional track record of building and scaling beloved consumer brands.

Melissa’s unique blend of operational and experiential roles in e-commerce and traditional retail will be critical as Modern Age transforms the respective healthcare categories in which it participates. Prior to founding Modern Age, Melissa served as Chief Operating Officer for Glossier, the digital-first beauty company which is revolutionizing the category by creating differentiated experiences and products in a large consumer market. Before Glossier, Melissa spent nearly 20 years at Amazon, most recently as Vice President of Amazon Devices, where she led an 800+ member team across engineering, product management, branding, marketing, demand planning and retail partnerships. In her time at Amazon, Melissa has also led multiple complex retail businesses and drove end-to-end business units. She has not only managed categories at maturity, but has also built and launched entirely new product lines that have scaled to millions of customers, including taking new businesses from launch (less than $1B of annual revenue) to significant scale (greater than $10B annual revenue).

As a firm, we take great pride in building companies that have meaningful impact on consumers’ lives, and we take even more pride in finding a partner who shares our values and can execute on the mission. We have a tremendous amount of admiration for Melissa, and we are thrilled to partner with her as she, her co-founders, and their team build Modern Age.

Welcome to the family, Melissa!

Team Juxtapose

We set out to build a firm dedicated to the creation of businesses that would solve problems in the most complex industries. We committed to understanding those industries deeply and building conviction in a company’s competitive advantage before a company was even formed. We centered our strategy around people, and creating trusted partnerships with proven entrepreneurs. Above all else, we wanted to play a part in companies whose impact would speak for itself.

Today, we are proud to announce the close of our second fund. The commitments, totaling $300M, come from a group of world-class endowments, foundations, public pensions, and family offices that are aligned with our long-term vision.

So far, our strategy is working. Our successful exit with Care/of, our first company, proved that our more deliberate, talent-centric approach can drive returns. We are admittedly still in our early days, but we are defying the conventional power law statistics of venture capital, where 70–80% of businesses fail. Instead, one hundred percent of the companies that we have started are thriving, and our first few businesses are approaching two billion dollars of equity value created. Our unique model has translated into top decile fund performance, and we are proud to have delivered on our promises not just to our entrepreneurs but to our limited partners as well.

This new, larger fund will enable us to accelerate investments in our team and process, but our strategy will stay the same. We’ll continue to focus on doing few things — and doing those few things very well. We’ll continue to push the boundaries in concept development, our mix of investment and human-centered design tools that allows us to create novel solutions in the largest, most complex industries. We’ll also double down on our efforts to identify, assess, and earn the trust of world class entrepreneurs who are uniquely suited to found industry-changing businesses.

Since starting Juxtapose, we’ve stayed in the background, instead letting our CEOs and their teams speak for us through their accomplishments. But six years into our journey, we want to honor this milestone and celebrate the many parties that have supported us. We want to thank our limited partners, many of whom have backed us since the beginning, when our team was just a handful of folks in a New York City walk-up, helping Craig and Akash from Care/of package supplements for their beta launch. We want to thank our other investors, advisors, and partners who have shaped Juxtapose and our companies in lasting ways. And most importantly, we want to thank our founding CEOs, as well as their co-founders and teams. To our CEOs: Craig, Jay, Court, Doug, Aaron, and Melissa, you are incredible friends, teachers, and partners.

While the world has changed a lot since 2015, we continue to believe there is genuine power in focusing on a few things and doing them well.

We look ahead with gratitude and optimism.

Jed, Patrick, and Team Juxtapose