PartnerHornthal Investment Partners
Jim Hornthal is a parallel entrepreneur, angel investor, and educator. Jim is the co-founder and Chairman of Zignal Labs, LaunchPad Central, and M34Capital. His private investment partnership has invested in more than 50 startups including Lyft, Lending Club, KIND Snacks (Mars), Krave Jerky (Hershey), Hightower Advisors, NeuroTrainer, and Flywire.
Jim has taught the cornerstone entrepreneurship course (The Lean LaunchPad) since it began at Berkeley in 2011. He has also taught the course at Stanford, UCSF, and Princeton and has led innovation teams for major corporations including The Mayo Clinic and WL Gore.
He was instrumental in translating this course to become the foundation of the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program which has since been adopted by the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. Jim is the former Chairman of the Young/World Presidents’ Organization Peace Action Network and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.