The Story Behind My Investment In Joymode

On occasion, I have had the good fortune of purely investing in a person, usually someone I know well, usually someone I call a friend. I have happily done this with companies like Trusted and EaseCentral. And, I did the same thing with Joe Fernandez and his new company out of Los Angeles, Joymode.

I first got to meet Joe because I wrote about how his previous (controversial) startup, Klout, was actually on to something counterintuitive. Klout was controversial for many reasons, the biggest being that its seemingly arbitrary ranking of social profiles seemed to fly in the face of the democratizing force of social media. It went so far to the point where influential Tech Twitterati would publicly tweet their distaste for the service, even though Joe and his team (run by friends like Don, Matt, and others) attracted institutional investment from some of the best firms on Sand Hill.

I never understood why people hated on Klout so much, so as I was writing about it (see here), it gave Joe and I excuse to meet, hang out, and over the years, become friends. Fast forward a few years, was hanging out with Joe and he informed me that he was packing his bags, headed down south, leaving the Valley behind. He was about to become a dad, and he wanted a change of scenery. Knowing Joe, i can’t blame him. As he was leaving, he was thinking about a new company (originally called “Funship”!) with his cofounder, so I immediately made sure I was meeting him a lot and part of those chats. I was personally bummed that Joe would be leaving town, but also excited about the prospect of getting to invest in Joe.

In the summer of 2014, I wrote a check into Funship and shared the opportunity with a few friends who grew equally as excited as me. For the past two years, Joe and his team have quietly been building Joymode, building the consumer app experience, getting the operations right, and testing a new consumer concept in downtown Los Angeles, a world away from San Francisco’s saturated consumer culture. It’s early days, but I never worry about Joe’s drive.

You can read more about Joymode elsewhere. Here, on this blog, the story is really about what kind of person and entrepreneur Joe is. Joe is someone who just does things without wasting time. When he needs to find a technical solution, he knows how to gather expertise or build a team to address it; or, when he needs to get something elusive, he knows how to cut corners and cut deals. He doesn’t ask for too much advice, instead relying on his entrepreneurial instincts, which I believe are sewn into his DNA and upbringing in Las Vegas. It’s worth noting that Joe and the Klout team drove that company to quite a meaningful exit to Lithium, an exit in today’s environment people would kill for — including many of those in the chorus who didn’t care for Klout and found it gauche.

But, Joe loves the haters. It fuels him. And that kind of fuel makes an investment a no-brainer decision.