Jason Mendelson

Jason has been a venture capitalist, startup co-founder, general counsel, and software engineer. Today he is an author, musician (under the name Jace Allen), philanthropist, and is very active in the criminal justice reform ecosystem. Jason was in the venture capital and technology industries in a multitude of investing, founding, legal, operational and engineering roles. His 20+ years of experience in this ecosystem led to him being a founding partner of Foundry Group, a Colorado-based venture capital firm that invests in technology companies throughout the U.S. and Canada. Foundry also created a fund-of-fund to invest in the next generation of venture capital managers. Jason is also a co-founder of SRS Acquiom, the largest mergers and acquisitions closing platform. SRS has completed over $500 billion in merger transactions as escrow agents, payments administrators, shareholder representatives and insurers. Prior to co-founding SRS, Jason was a Managing Director and General Counsel for Mobius Venture Capital, where he also acted as its chief administrative partner overseeing all operations of the firm. During this time, Jason led fund formation activities and assisted portfolio companies with challenges dealing with high-stakes litigation, securities, employment, regulatory and intellectual property law. As one of the first full-time, in-house general counsels at a venture capital firm, Jason has been on the forefront of thought leadership and has co-chaired the National Venture Capital Association’s (NVCA) General Counsel group and has been an active participant on the NVCA’s Chief Financial Officer group. He was one of the key draftspersons for the NVCA model document task force which created the industry’s first set of standardized venture capital financing documents, which has greatly aided in the efficiency of completing these types of deals. He served on the board of the NVCA, including as an executive board member, from 2009-2013. Prior to his involvement with Mobius Venture Capital, Jason was an attorney with Cooley LLP, where he practiced corporate and securities law with an emphasis on representation of emerging companies in private and public financings, mergers and acquisitions. Before his legal career, Jason was a senior consultant and software engineer at Accenture where he focused on financial institution re-engineering engagements. While at Accenture, Jason supervised programming teams up to forty people in size and was responsible for managing deliverables in multi-billion dollar engagements. Jason holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics, with distinction and a Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. Jason has also been an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado for over a decade and is a Senior Fellow of the Silicon Flatirons.