Founding Partner

John Johnston

 
Founding Partner

John Johnston

 
Founding Partner

John Johnston

 

John co-founded August Capital in 1995. Prior to that he served as a general partner with Technology Venture Investors (TVI) from 1988, and Hambrecht & Quist Venture Partners (H&Q) from 1983 to 1988. During his venture career, John has invested in more than 25 technology companies, serving on more than 20 boards of directors.

Since the mid-90’s, John’s primary focus has been internet commerce and software as a service companies and he has been an investor in companies such as Postini (acquired by Google), Shopping.com (acquired by eBay), eShop (acquired by Microsoft), and Cygnus Solutions (acquired by RedHat).

In addition to his U.S. venture capital experience, John worked in Hong Kong for five years at a pioneering Asian venture capital firm, Inter-Asia Management Co., Ltd. (IAM). While at IAM, he participated in investments such as McDonald’s Restaurants (HK) Ltd. and Ikea Furniture (HK) Ltd., and was active as a board member in the management of several portfolio companies.

John received an BA in English from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard University. He is a past director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists.

Current August investments: Airship, Amount, Avant, and INRIX.

Previous August investments: Adchemy (acquired by Walmart), Cygnus Solutions (acquired by RedHat), Devicescape (acquired by Pareteum), Enuvis (acquired by SiRF), Postini (acquired by Google), Radlan (acquired by Marvell Semiconductor), Summit Microelectronics (acquired by Qualcomm), Threadsy (acquired by Facebook) and Valicert (acquired by Tumbleweed).

Other previous investments: eShop (acquired by Microsoft), Frame Technology (acquired by Adobe), Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU), Logic Automation (acquired by Synopsys), Saros (acquired by FileNet), Sybase (NYSE: SY), Visio (acquired by Microsoft) and Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX).

 
 

Select Active Investments

Industry Sector: Software and Services

Headquartered: San Francisco, CA

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

Urban Airship: The Leading Mobile Engagement Platform. Urban Airship helps leading brands engage their mobile users and build high-value relationships from the moment customers download an app. Thousands of companies and some of the most demanding brands in retail, media & entertainment, sports and travel & hospitality, trust Urban Airship to deliver the mobile moments that matter to their customers and to their business.

 

Industry Sector: FinTech

Headquartered: Chicago, IL

Lead Investment Professional: Eric Carlborg/John Johnston

AvantCredit: Amount.com is an enterprise SaaS company selling to the world’s largest financial institutions. Amount products enable its customers to deliver a full suite of digital banking products to their customers. Products include verification, identity, fraud protection, point of sale lending, personal loan products, credit card product and deposit account services.

Industry Sector: FinTech

Headquartered: Chicago, IL

Lead Investment Professional: Eric Carlborg/John Johnston

AvantCredit: Avant is a fast-growing marketplace lending platform that is lowering the costs and barriers of borrowing for consumers. Utilizing big data and machine-learning algorithms, the company offers a unique and highly customized approach to streamlined credit options.

Industry Sector: Software and Services

Headquartered: Kirkland, WA

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

INRIX: INRIX has the world’s largest driver network with more than 175 million real-time vehicles and devices from 100’s of distinct sources around the world to then analyze through our traffic intelligence platform. Our comprehensive approach allows you to provide your customers with unparalleled insight, setting your products and services apart from the competition.

Select Exited Investments

Industry Sector: eCommerce

Headquartered: Foster City

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

Adchemy (acquired by Walmart Labs): Adchemy is a product search company and a leader in e-commerce technology.

Industry Sector: Hardware

Headquartered: San Jose, CA

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

CSR (SiRF/Enuvis) (acquired by BlackStone Group/CSR): Silicon GPS chip technologies.

Industry Sector: Software and Services

Headquartered: San Bruno, CA

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

Devicescape (Acquired by Pareteum): Devicescape keeps end users Always Best Connected by integrating cellular connectivity with public, private and carrier Wi-Fi to create a seamless, quality-controlled mobile data experience.

 

Industry Sector: Networking and Communications

Headquartered: NA

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

MetroFi (exited): Municipal wireless mesh networking platform.

Industry Sector: Data Communications

Headquartered: Tel Aviv, Israel

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

RADLAN (acquired by Marvell): Design, development and manufacturing of advanced routing and switching systems and technologies. More than 70 percent of the Company’s employees are engineers with expertise in silicon-based Layer 2/3/4 switching, routing software and network management applications. RADLAN offers system vendors a technology that fills the gap between the applications and the hardware components-to create a complete carrier-class system in the fastest time.

Industry Sector: Software and Services

Headquartered: NA

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

threadsy (acquired by Facebook): threadsy is an integrated communication client grouping all of a users’ email and social network messages into a single inbox.

Industry Sector: Software and Services

Headquartered: Seattle, WA

Lead Investment Professional: John Johnston

Trumba (exited): Trumba Corporation is a Seattle-based developer of innovative event calendar publishing technology that helps businesses and organizations more effectively publish, promote, and communicate their events online. Trumba enables customers—from small businesses to large organizations—to connect key audiences with their events, transforming those events into unique and highly valued marketing and communication opportunities. The company’s flagship product, Trumba® Connect, increases awareness of important events through web-hosted calendar solutions and a comprehensive suite of event promotion tools. Developed for organizations that need to communicate event information to customers, members, or employees, Trumba Connect is easy to implement and maintain and is fully customizable for seamless brand integration.