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XHow Jordan Fudge Raised One of the Largest Funds in LA History
Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.

Jordan Fudge – Black, openly gay, and only 28-years old – recently closed one of the largest venture funds in Los Angeles history, which he runs out of a lavish Bel Air mansion. He has raised nearly a billion dollars in dry powder from a reclusive billionaire in Germany, who he got connected to through his personal trainer.
In a notoriously clubby and homogenous industry with few people of color, Sinai Capital Partners Managing Partner Fudge sees standing out from the pack as a major edge.
"We can be ourselves and leverage our youth in a way that makes founders feel excited to share their ideas with us and feel like they won't be rejected for having something that comes out of left field," Fudge said. "We understand certain concepts a little bit more quickly because typically the market they're trying to address is people like us."
Sinai Capital Partners has raised $600 million, $500 million of which will go towards the tech-focused Sinai Ventures and the rest to fund movies and television shows at New Slate Ventures. All told, Sinai will now have $800 million in assets under management, vaulting it into the upper echelon of L.A. venture funds.
The news touting the raise as the largest in Los Angeles history was announced in a terse press release last month but received scant attention, perhaps because Fudge does not travel in the usual VC circles or because he says he has deliberately avoided the spotlight.
"We preferred to stay under the radar until we had some real results and a track record," Fudge said.
In something unheard of in the tech world, Fudge does not have a LinkedIn profile.
"To me, LinkedIn encourages a rather shallow, artificial type of networking," he said.
But Fudge is hardly shy. He shares shirtless selfies in his home gym or pictures of yachts and sports cars to his nearly half a million followers on Instagram. Earlier this year, he co-hosted a tony fundraiser at his home for Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg with Empire writer/director Lee Daniels. He also serves on the board of the LGBTQ advocacy group, GLAAD, and was a young associate director at the Metropolitan Opera until last year.
Instead of the sleek corporate offices in Santa Monica most venture firms operated in before the pandemic, Fudge runs Sinai from a $9 million mansion tucked in the hills of Bel Air, furnished in all-white with a grand staircase and backyard pool.
"We chose it over an office because we don't like working in traditional office spaces," he explained. "We've had founders stay there when they're in L.A. for meetings and in better times hosted events and fundraisers."
What also makes Sinai unusual is that all of its capital comes from a single limited partner. Asked who that person is, Fudge said the individual prefers not to be named. "We don't comment on our LPs out of respect for their privacy," he said.
Then, he volunteered that the LP is a German billionaire who made his fortune as a founder of enterprise software conglomerate SAP and has a family office called Eagle Advisors.
A quick Google search reveals the billionaire is almost certainly Hans-Werner Hector, ranked as the 945th richest man in world by Forbes with an estimated $2.4 billion fortune.
The head of Eagle Advisors, Ekkehart Hassels-Weiler, has been known mostly for his lavish real estate purchases on both U.S. coasts. He bought four penthouses totaling $120 million in New York starting in the mid-2010s and last year reportedly purchased a Benedict Canyon spec mansion with his new husband for $43 million.
In 2015, after an uninspiring post-college stint at 21st Century Fox, Fudge met Hassels-Weiler through their personal trainers who happen to be brothers.
"We'd often see each other at the gym in L.A. near where the family office is based," Fudge remembers. "When I left Fox, I intentionally started scheduling sessions at the same time as him to get some face time and pick his brain. I finally asked him if he had hired anyone to look after tech, media, telecom and he hadn't due to their focus on energy and real estate."
Fudge pitched Hassels-Weiler on the graphics processing chip manufacturer NVIDIA Corporation and the timing turned out to be perfect. The stock more than tripled in a year, a return that led to Hassels-Weiler bringing Fudge on as an associate.
"I developed sort of an in-house private house venture capital fund for them, which was then spun out into what is now Sinai," Fudge said. "We started with them seeding us with one hundred million and did really well with that."
The biggest breakout from the 85 startups Sinai has invested in so far is Pinterest. The fund came in relatively late in Pinterest's 2017 Series H at a post-money valuation of $12.3 billion. The company went public in 2019 at a lower valuation of $10 billion, but Pinterest now has a market cap of more than $40 billion.
Sinai also got in on the real estate service Compass' Series D and the Series A of Ro, the parent company of Roman Health.
Eagle Advisors more than doubled its investment on Fund I, according to sources.
"We were able to use that credibility to continue to raise more capital from them and go later in the life cycle of some of these companies that we're interested in," Fudge said. "Specifically within Los Angeles, there really aren't many funds that are able to write those kinds of checks."
Fudge initially launched Sinai in the Bay Area, but he quickly soured on the tech scene there.
"I found San Francisco to be a monoculture and generally a soulless, unpleasant place to live," he said. "The VC crowd there has a tendency of being rather pompous and the deals we were seeing in the city seemed increasingly overpriced."
In 2018, the firm relocated to Los Angeles. Fudge and Zach White — the partner who helps oversee Sinai Ventures — both grew up here and say they want to invest in L.A. startups, but also companies anywhere that encapsulate the L.A. ethos of tech, entertainment and diversity.
"We're L.A. at our very core," White said. "And the sort of fiber and DNA of our fund is L.A. But we are going to be global in the way that we allocate capital."
Far from a hindrance, White says the fact that he and Fudge are young and Black has helped them get into highly competitive funding rounds. He points to Brud, an L.A company that uses artificial intelligence to create virtual popstars. It secured early funding from Sequoia but Fudge is friends with the founder, Trevor McFedries, and so they were able to get in on the Series A.
"He has no shortage of suitors trying to get into that company," White said. "But I think that us being able to view it from the perspective of someone who's a little bit closer in age and skin color to him really benefited us."
McFedries says he finds Fudge to be "super smart" and a great listener.
"He has a point of view that allows him to recognize opportunities others wouldn't," said McFedries. "And being in L.A. it's been great to have an investor close by."
An Entertainment Fund for Underrepresented Founders
After he graduated from Northwestern University, Fudge got what seemed like a plum gig in 2014, working on digital strategy under co-chairs Dana Walden – now a top executive at Disney – and Gary Newman. As he remembers it, the mandate of his group was figuring out how to make money licensing Fox's vast library of content to Netflix and Hulu without cannibalizing the studio's lucrative television and movie business.
"At the time, legacy studios like Fox were just beginning to recognize the legitimacy of subscription services as existential threats," Fudge said. "Part of the reason I left was I realized there wasn't much more runway for a company like that, a legacy media company owned by a family that sort of is trying to compete with these massive tech behemoths that have deeper pockets and a better understanding of the customer."
Six years later, every big media company is desperately trying to be the next Netflix and Fudge thinks he can use his entertainment and tech experience to both make a sizable return and elevate underrepresented filmmakers.
"There is a huge opportunity for artists that typically wouldn't fare very well within traditional studio structures to be able to make their films and create art that is authentic and resonates with this generation," Fudge said. "They can do that with us because we understand it as first-hand consumers of that content."
Fudge's New Slate Ventures wants to fund projects from underrepresented filmmakers. It has seen critical success backing "The Forty-Year-Old Version," a semi autobiographical comedy mostly shot in black and white from filmmaker Radha Blank that critics have hailed as "bringing a new voice to cinema." The film drew raves at Sundance and was picked up by Netflix.
New Slate is also developing a limited series on junk bond king turned philanthropist Michael Milken written by Terrence Winter of "The Sopranos" and "The Wolf of Wall Street" fame.
Aside from both being a sometimes glamorous yet risky investment, entertainment and tech would seem to have little in common. But Fudge maintains there have never been more similarities.
"The rules are being administered by the same companies and also being rewritten by similar types of people in terms of the founders who are coming to create new companies in a way that I think directors and producers are also looking to create new opportunities in media," Fudge said. "I have a very good understanding of how to make money in entertainment in this new sort of era that we're entering with the streaming wars being what they are."
The entertainment fund is being run by Jeremy Allen, who spent two years as an assistant to WME Chairman Patrick Whitesell.
"We understand how to read a script," Allen said. "We understand what makes a good movie. We understand how to produce something."
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Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
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Snapchat’s Attempt to Protect Young Users From Third-Party Apps Falls Short
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Some Snap Kit platform developers have skirted guidelines meant to make the app safer for children.
A new report from TechCrunch released Tuesday found that some third-party apps that connect to users’ Snap accounts have not been updated according to new guidelines announced in March. The restrictions, which target anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps, are meant to increase child safety. However, the investigation found a number of apps either ignore the new regulations or falsely claim to be integrated with Snapchat.
The Santa Monica-based social media company announced the changes after facing two separate lawsuits related to teen suicide allegedly caused by the app. Over 1,500 developers integrate Snap features like the camera and Bitmojis. Snap originally claimed the update would not affect many apps.
Developers had 30 days to revise their software, but the investigation found that some apps, such as the anonymous Q&A app Sendit, were granted an extension. Others blatantly avoided the changes—the anonymous messaging app HMU, which is now meant for adult users, is still available to users "9+" in the App Store. Certain apps that have been banned from Snap, like Intext, still advertise Snapchat integration.
“First and foremost, we put the privacy and safety of our community first and expect the products built by our developer community to adhere to that standard in addition to bringing fun and positive experiences to people,” Director of Platform Partnerships Alston Cheek told TechCrunch.
The news is a blow to Snap’s recent efforts to cast itself as a responsible social media platform The company recently announced Colleen DeCourcy would take over as the company’s new chief creative officer and CEO Evan Spiegel to recently made a a generous personal donation to graduates of Otis College of Art and Design. The social media company currently faces a lawsuit from a teenager who claims it has not done enough to protect minors from sexual exploitation. In April, 44 attorney generals sent a letter to Snap and TikTok urging the companies to strengthen parental controls.
Lawmakers are considering new policies that would hold social media companies accountable for the content on their platforms. One such bill would require social media companies to share data with independent researchers.
Snapchat recently rolled out augmented reality shopping features and influencer-led original content to grow its younger base of users.
Snap Inc., Snapchat's parent company, is an investor in dot.LA.
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
When we list the attributes most associated with successful founders, investors, billionaires, and industry leaders, we often think of things like determination, grit, fortitude, and even obsessiveness. The winners are the most relentless, the ones who work the hardest, know the most, start the earliest in the morning on 4 hours of sleep, and won’t accept no for an answer.
While discussing the venture capital world, and his upcoming technology conference in Santa Monica, The Montgomery Summit 2022, March Capital co-founder and managing partner Jamie Montgomery doesn’t necessarily contradict this formula for success, but adds a new attribute to the mix that’s sometimes left out: curiosity.
Montgomery’s a believer that there’s no one right way to go about things, and no surefire process for success. Sometimes, the best company emerges from not just the best data and team but the most creative approach. “If something isn’t clear, invert,” Montgomery explained. “Then invert again. Soon the subject becomes clear.”
The best investors and leaders have an innate inquisitiveness about the world around them, and seek out opportunities not just based on market trends but genuine observations about problems in desperate need of solutions.
“You sort of have to be a very heuristical thinker,” Montgomery said. “Sometimes I find some people I talk to are very smart and interesting, and I think, “That person’s very thoughtful. They’re going to be a good investor.’ Sometimes you meet people and you think ‘Well, they come across smart, but they’re always preparing what they’re going to say in response to what you have to say, they’re not really listening.’ Being a good investor, you’ve got to be a good listener. You’ve got to figure out, what’s the signal and what’s the noise? Filter out the noise and say ‘What’s real?’”
Thoughtfulness, attentiveness and curiosity are typically the sort of attributes that we think of as innate, as opposed to skills you can improve via on-the-job training. Montgomery noted, “I always ask entrepreneurs why rather than what. You get a more interesting answer.” Reading and research and investigation can help, but innate curiosity remains an essential ingredient in business success.
“I think, to be an investor, not just a VC but an overall investor, one benefits from an incredible amount of reading and knowledge,” Montgomery explained. “You have to have a voracious appetite, so it’s really a high-level curiosity. Some people have it, some don’t.”
March Capital Founder Jamie Montgomery.
Illustration by Dilara Mundy
One subject that’s on Montgomery’s mind these days is quantum computing, and its potential impact on cybersecurity, a major area of focus for March. His process starts by asking core questions about the next 5-10 years and what they’ll look like, before even considering potential solutions.
“If you’re investing, you have to look at something that’s inevitable,” Montgomery explained. “Is it gonna happen or not. If it’s inevitable, then the question is, is it imminent? And is it investible? Start with inevitable. Eventually you’re going to have quantum computing, and that’s gonna create an existential threat to cybersecurity. Is that imminent?... What is the post-quantum cyber world like, with all this information that’s been siphoned out of America by China… what do they have and how do we prepare for a post-quantum cybersecurity? It’s almost existential.”
This holistic question-based approach also drives Montgomery as he plans and organizes the annual Montgomery Summit, the largest such event of the LA tech calendar year (Montgomery refers to it as the “Rose Bowl of Conferences.”)
He expects around 1,200 people to attend this year – the event’s big return post-pandemic – for panels and sessions that don’t just cover areas in which March Capital specializes, but a vast and diverse variety of subjects and topics, designed to intrigue and inspire curious minds.
Over 175 speakers in total have signed on for the 19th annual Montgomery Summit, to be held on May 24 and 25, from the worlds of technology, economics, geopolitics, public policy, the sciences, and beyond. Montgomery gets animated as he tells me about the voluminous range of topics being covered, from the Federal Reserve’s response to inflation to the war in Ukraine to the stories behind companies like Bill.com and CrowdStrike. One session will feature Chapman University Presidential Fellow Jack Horner, one of the world’s leading paleontologists and a key inspiration for the “Jurassic Park” character Dr. Alan Grant.
“It’s the interaction, the entrepreneurs with the investors and the executives,” Montgomery told me. “It’s fantastic, it’s enjoyable, it’s fun, and it’s candid. There are no big egos. The speakers will actually come and talk to you, they don’t come in the back door and leave through the back door. You actually can go to any one of seven sessions, and it’s going to be interesting, and they’re all short. 25-45 minutes each.”
The shorter 25-45 minute sessions help to stave off boredom and mean that attendees can sample a wider range of subjects and sessions than they might at other conferences. It helps keep things moving and makes them fun, a theme Montgomery returned to a few times in our discussion.
“There’s a lot of conferences that are very professionally run or research-driven or they’re very commercial. People come here and they’re gonna have a blast, right?”
The Montgomery Summit runs May 24th-25th at Santa Monica's Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows. Find out more information on their website.
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Netflix Lays Off 150 Employees
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Netflix is laying off roughly 150 people after the streaming giant lost subscribers last quarter.
In a statement to dot.LA, a Netflix spokesperson said the company’s slowing revenue growth means it must rein in its costs.
“So sadly, we are letting around 150 employees go today, mostly U.S.-based,” the spokesperson said. “These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough as none of us want to say goodbye to such great colleagues. We're working hard to support them through this very difficult transition."
The job cuts amount to 2% of the company’s workforce, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The streaming giant is eliminating 70 roles in its animation division, and cutting contractor jobs in social media and publishing channels, THR reported, citing a company memo. Affected employees are expected to receive severance packages starting at four months.
The layoffs come just a few weeks after Netflix laid off about 25 people in its marketing division, including at its editorial website Tudum.
Netflix shares have cratered since the streaming platform reported that it lost 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter—the first time the company shed customers in more than a decade. The company also expects to lose 2 million more in the current second quarter. The streamer blamed increased competition, password sharing and the war in Ukraine, among other issues.
During the earnings call in April, Netflix CFO warned that over the next two years, “we're kind of operating to roughly that operating margin, which does mean that we're pulling back on some of our spend growth across both content and noncontent spend.”
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Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.