Jed Smith
Co-Founder @ Owl Ventures
San Francisco, United States
Jed Smith is a Series A investor at Owl Ventures in San Francisco focused on Education and Software. Jed is a Partner of Catamount Ventures. He has dedicated his business career to the art of entrepreneurship and to making a difference. Prior to launching Catamount, Jed founded drugstore.com (NASDAQ: DSCM) in 1997, serving on its board of directors with John Doerr, Brook Byers, Peter Neupert, Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos. Before that, heco-founded and spent four years at Cybersmith, a retail store chain that showcased the latest advances in information technology and multimedia software. Jed was also Vice President of Sales at Tribe Computer Works, a networking hardware and software company that was successfully sold. Jed began his career in technology working for Tom Siebel and, later, Marc Benioff at Oracle Corporation, ultimately serving as District Manager for the Eastern Region. Jed has no doubt that world-class mentors have been important to his career.Jed has advised many private companies and currently serves on the boards of Linden Lab, Numi Organic Tea, Banyan Water, Plum Organics, and Revolution Foods. He has also served on the boards of several education and non-profit institutions, including the Board of Trustees of Middlebury College, the Monterey Institute for International Studies, Shackleton Schools and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Jed earned a BA from Middlebury College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
- Total investments:
- 14
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 29%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Jed Smith invests in
Stages Jed Smith invests in
Countries Jed Smith invests in
Investment Focus
Industry
- Education 5 (36%)
- Software 3 (21%)
- SaaS 2 (14%)
- EdTech 2 (14%)
- Water 1 (7%)
Stage
- Series A 6 (43%)
- Series B 3 (21%)
- Seed 2 (14%)
- Series C 2 (14%)
- Funding Round 1 (7%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
Panorama Education
|
Panorama Education is the leading platform for student support and learning. The platform connects MTSS, learning, surveys, and graduation pathways, helping K-12 districts use data and AI to understand student needs and take effective action. Panorama enables better decisions and improved outcomes for more than 15 million students nationwide acrossinstruction, student support, special education, and graduation pathways. | $60M / Series C / Sep 02, 2021 | |
Amira Learning
|
Amira Learning offers an intelligent reading assistant that listens, assesses, and tutors. Amira recommends appropriately challenging stories, listens as a student reads aloud, and intervenes when helpful. The company assesses oral reading fluency and analyzes errors to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. Every time a student and Amira readtogether, Amira generates diagnostic reports that empower teachers and parents. It gives teachers more time to teach and gives students a more effective way to practice. | $11M / Series B / Apr 14, 2021 | |
|
Amira Learning
|
Amira Learning offers an intelligent reading assistant that listens, assesses, and tutors. Amira recommends appropriately challenging stories, listens as a student reads aloud, and intervenes when helpful. The company assesses oral reading fluency and analyzes errors to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. Every time a student and Amira readtogether, Amira generates diagnostic reports that empower teachers and parents. It gives teachers more time to teach and gives students a more effective way to practice. | $6.3M / Series A / Sep 11, 2019 | |
|
Panorama Education
|
Panorama Education is the leading platform for student support and learning. The platform connects MTSS, learning, surveys, and graduation pathways, helping K-12 districts use data and AI to understand student needs and take effective action. Panorama enables better decisions and improved outcomes for more than 15 million students nationwide acrossinstruction, student support, special education, and graduation pathways. | $16M / Series B / Nov 07, 2017 | |
Play Piper
|
Piper is a Minecraft toolbox for budding engineers that leverages kids' love of Minecraft to show them that building real gadgets is effortless and fun. At a time when technology pervades every part of our life, kids learn to passively USE technology, but not to CREATE with it. We believe that giving kids an opportunity to become creatorsrather than consumers, and to do it through a game their already understand and love is a powerful way to replace screen-time with build-time. Letting kids invent, tinker, and build in the physical world while they are young is the most powerful way to empower them to create the future. | $7.6M / Series A / Sep 14, 2017 | |
Abl Schools
|
Abl is building a new kind of school operations software that helps school leaders better manage their time and resources. Their mission is to transform education by helping schools create flexible, transparent, and collaborative learning environments. | $7.5M / Series A / Jun 29, 2017 | |
RaiseMe
|
The college landscape today is broken for millions of students. Equal access to higher ed has become one of the greatest issues of our time. At RaiseMe, we're reinventing educational pathways and changing the way students access billions of dollars each year in financial aid for college. Rather than waiting until the end of high school toaward financial aid, which is too late to affect students' college ambitions or specific application decisions, RaiseMe enables students to earn "micro-Scholarships" automatically throughout high school based on their individual achievements in and outside of the classroom. Students have already earned over $2 billion in micro-scholarships from our university partners. We're on the look out for talented individuals to help us build a large, impactful business and a product that will change millions of lives. | $12M / Series A / Mar 29, 2017 | |
Banyan Water
|
Banyan Water provides smart water management as a service for commercial and institutional businesses using real-time technologies and related services to save money and enhance properties. The company helps businesses find and maintain water savings opportunities throughout their portfolios. The company serves business decision-makers in thehospitality, property management, real estate investment, living community, landscaping, and academic sectors.It was founded in 2011 and based in Austin, Texas. | $1.5M / Jun 27, 2016 | |
|
Abl Schools
|
Abl is building a new kind of school operations software that helps school leaders better manage their time and resources. Their mission is to transform education by helping schools create flexible, transparent, and collaborative learning environments. | $4.5M / Seed / Jan 15, 2016 | |
|
Panorama Education
|
Panorama Education is the leading platform for student support and learning. The platform connects MTSS, learning, surveys, and graduation pathways, helping K-12 districts use data and AI to understand student needs and take effective action. Panorama enables better decisions and improved outcomes for more than 15 million students nationwide acrossinstruction, student support, special education, and graduation pathways. | $12M / Series A / Aug 04, 2015 | |
| See all 14 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Owl Ventures
Owl Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in education technology companies.The firm has invested in 24 companies across the education spectrum encompassing early childhood, K-12, higher education, and career mobility/professional learning. Owl leverages its deep domain expertise and takes an active hands-on approach to helpentrepreneurs scale their businesses into transformative category-leading companies.The firm was founded in 2014 and has over $600 million in assets under management.
Owl Ventures Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Amit Patel
Managing Director
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Jenny Wang
Principal
|
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Judy Park
Principal
|
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Tory Patterson
Co-Founder and Managing Director
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Hailey Carter
Senior Associate
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FAQ
What does Jed Smith invest in?
Jed Smith invests primarily in Education, Software and SaaS startups, most often at Series A and Series B stage. Most of the 14 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
When did Jed Smith last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Jed Smith closed in Sep 2021. Shizune tracks 14 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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