LA Venture: Meet Watertower Ventures' Jeremy Milken

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
Watertower Ventures' Jeremy Milken

This week, I sat down with Jeremy Milken, a partner at Watertower Ventures. Jeremy doesn't grant many interviews, so it was great to get to know him better on this episode of the L.A. Venture podcast.


Watertower Ventures is a well established seed-stage investment firm that invests in industries with shifting paradigms, particularly in consumer, SaaS enterprise, fintech, real estate tech, media and gaming industries. It just started investing out of its new $50 million Fund II.

Jeremy focuses on SaaS enterprises, and is a six-time founder with four successful exits. His most recent company is WorkSpace, which streamlined operations and asset management for businesses, and which he funded through bootstrapping.

He sold the company in 2019 and joined Watertower, where he works closely with his good friend Derek Norton, Watertower founder, who brought him onto the team.

Jeremy and I discussed how he understands the interplay between venture capital and private equity as it applies to his family's business, The Milken Institute, which will be hosting its annual global conference in October.

We also talked about his entrepreneurial journey, the ups and downs he's faced as a founder on the road to Watertower and why it's best for him to not work with the Milken Institute, instead pursuing his own interests.

Jeremy and I also discussed his business insights as an investor, his perspective on the future of venture capital, his wife's podcast "Flexible Neurotic" and his amateur jazz piano skills.

Jeremy Milken is a general partner at Watertower Ventures.

"I mean, I could sit here in this room and try and convince you how smart I am and everything, but I don't know anything. Okay. I don't know anything more than anybody else. And I think it's an important lesson, right?" — Jeremy Milken

dot.LA Engagement Intern Colleen Tufts contributed to this post.

Want to hear more of L.A. Venture? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Correction: An earlier version of this post introduced Jeremy Milken as a partner at WatchTower Ventures. He is a partner at Watertower ventures.

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Spencer Rascoff

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Raises
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Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

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InLA

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