Jeff Fluhr

Who they are

Jeff Fluhr is a Venture Partner at Craft Ventures — co-founded StubHub in 2000 with Eric Baker, sold it to eBay in 2007, then built and shut down Spreecast, a social video platform, before moving into VC.

Person

Jeff Fluhr came out of Penn with a dual degree in engineering and finance, did a stint at Blackstone and Thomas Weisel Partners, then dropped into Stanford GSB — and left before finishing to co-found StubHub with Eric Baker in 2000, an idea born from a Stanford business plan competition. He ran StubHub as CEO through its 2007 sale to eBay, one of the earlier large secondary-market exits in consumer internet. After a period as an angel investor, he co-founded Spreecast in 2011 — a social video platform that integrated with Facebook and Twitter — and led it as CEO through 2017 before it shut down. He joined Craft Ventures in 2018 when the firm had just closed its first $350 million fund, initially as General Partner; his current listing is Venture Partner. Alongside his employed track he co-founded three named entities: StubHub (online ticket marketplace), Spreecast (social video platform), and Craft Ventures itself (early-stage VC firm, co-founded with David Sacks and Bill Lee in 2017). He writes at medium.com/@jeff_fluhr on SaaS, marketplaces, and venture capital — including a widely-cited essay on the hyper-verticalization of labor marketplaces — and has appeared on The Founder Hour, the Pattern Recognition podcast, and a Craft Ventures AI Day panel in 2023. The through-line is marketplace creation: he builds things where supply and demand need to find each other, then studies why they do or don't.

Company

Craft Ventures' most recent headline is a $250 million Series E it led for Horizon3.ai in June 2026, valuing the autonomous AI hacking company at over $2 billion — a sign the firm is writing larger checks into cybersecurity. A month later, in July 2026, Craft participated in a $135 million Series A for 8090 Labs, an AI coding platform for enterprise teams led by Salesforce Ventures. In April 2026 the firm also led a $30 million growth round for ComfyUI at a $500 million post-money valuation, and backed Hyfix, a U.S. drone chip startup building a domestic supply chain alternative to DJI. The firm closed $1.32 billion across Craft Ventures IV and Growth II funds in November 2023, and now manages over $3.5 billion in assets across more than 265 portfolio companies, with 29 unicorns, 16 IPOs, and 35 acquisitions including Slack, Uber, and Lyft.

Market

Craft Ventures competes directly with Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Lightspeed, Greylock, Benchmark, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst for early-stage B2B technology deals, particularly in SaaS, AI, and cybersecurity. Its differentiated positioning is an operator-founder pedigree — David Sacks, Jeff Fluhr, and other partners have built and sold companies — which it uses to win deals and support portfolio companies with marketing, sales, and technical architecture. Geopolitical tensions and US-China trade dynamics are actively shaping Craft's thesis, pushing it toward domestic supply chains, national security technologies, dual-use AI, and space commerce investments.

Network

Fluhr's closest named orbit centers on his Craft Ventures co-founders and his original StubHub partner. At Craft he works alongside David Sacks (founder and general partner), with firm leadership including Mark Woolway (President), Brian Murray (Partner & COO), and Michael Robinson (Partner, Head of Investment Team). His StubHub co-founder Eric Baker remains a named contact, and Fluhr sits on the boards of Northspyre, Instawork, People Data Labs, and Zendoor.

David Sacks· Founder and General Partner, Craft Ventures
Eric Baker· Co-founder, StubHub
Mark Woolway· President, Craft Ventures
Brian Murray· Partner & COO, Craft Ventures
Michael Robinson· Partner & Head of Investment Team, Craft Ventures

How they likely show up

Co-founded StubHub, ran it to exit, then co-founded Spreecast, then co-founded Craft Ventures → serial company-builder who treats each chapter as a new operating problem, not a credential to coast on.
Left Stanford GSB before finishing to start StubHub → has a revealed preference for doing over credentialing; likely impatient with process for its own sake.
Hybrid role type (operator → angel → GP → Venture Partner) → comfortable in ambiguous seat definitions; probably self-directs rather than waiting for a job description.
Active writer on Medium covering SaaS, marketplaces, and VC → thinks in frameworks and publishes them, which means he'll have formed views on most market questions before you ask.
Long tenure shape across two multi-year founding stints (StubHub 2000–2007, Spreecast 2011–2017) → willing to stay in the mud for years; not a quick-flip mentality.
Board seats at Northspyre, Instawork, People Data Labs, and Zendoor simultaneously → comfortable holding multiple contexts at once and likely presses portfolio companies for accountability metrics.

Conversation tips

→ Reference the Medium essay on LinkedIn being the new Craigslist — it signals you've read his actual thinking on labor marketplace verticalization, not just his bio.
→ Ask about the Spreecast chapter specifically: he ran a social video company from 2011 to shutdown in 2017, and that failure arc is probably more instructive to him than the StubHub win.
→ He thinks in marketplace dynamics — bring a specific supply/demand or unit-economics framing to any company discussion rather than a general narrative.
→ Don't treat his VC role as his primary identity; he's an operator who invests, and he'll likely engage more if you open on a company-building question than a fund-strategy one.
→ If discussing AI investments, be specific — he was on a Craft AI Day panel in 2023 and the firm has led rounds in ComfyUI, Horizon3.ai, and Daylight Security, so he has concrete reference points and will probe vague claims.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Horizon3.ai $250 million Series E Craft led in June 2026 — it's the firm's largest recent check and signals a meaningful bet on autonomous AI hacking; asking what changed in the cybersecurity thesis to justify that round size gives him something specific to engage with.
Reference the Spreecast chapter: he co-founded a social video platform in 2011 that integrated with Facebook and Twitter and shut it down by 2017 — framing a question around what that experience taught him about platform dependency is a more interesting entry than asking about StubHub.
Bring up the Medium essay on LinkedIn being the new Craigslist — he published a specific argument about hyper-verticalization of labor marketplaces that's on the record; starting there shows you've read his actual framework, not just his Wikipedia page.

Discovery questions

You wrote about hyper-verticalization of labor marketplaces — how has that thesis held up as AI agents start to intermediate the same hiring workflows Instawork and People Data Labs are in?
Craft led the Hyfix round in April 2026 specifically around U.S. drone supply chain sovereignty — how do you think about the holding period and exit path for national-security bets like that versus a pure SaaS investment?
You went from CEO at StubHub and Spreecast to GP and now Venture Partner at Craft — what does the Venture Partner seat let you do that the GP seat didn't, and what do you give up?

Avoid

Don't pitch or discuss anything as a pure marketplace play without unit economics — he co-founded and sold StubHub and has written publicly on marketplace dynamics, so he'll cut through surface-level narrative immediately.

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