Personal
Jim is the Founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, a global venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA. Jim has been an investor in over 40 consumer internet/technology companies that have completed successful public offerings or mergers, including Facebook, Etsy, Legendary, Datalogix and Marvel Entertainment. As a lead investor and/or board member, Jim has assisted teams at over a dozen companies complete IPOs. Several of his investments have returned to investors over 100 times their cost, and ov
Big Break
After Breyer left for Harvard Business School he was determined to get back to the Valley. He got turned down by Kleiner and Sequoia. He interviewed with Larry Ellison and Tom Siebel at Oracle. Ellison asked him what other jobs he was considering. Breyer said he was seriously thinking about venture capital. Ellison said, “Jim, you come work for me and Oracle for ten years and you’ll be your own venture capitalist.†Instead Breyer went to Accel, a two-man venture shop comprised of Citicorp alums Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz.
Rags-to-riches
The first few years of his life were spent living in a funeral home in New Haven, Conn. It was the cheapest place his parents could afford. They had arrived in the U.S. with five dollars, having fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution and settling in Vienna for a year before his father earned a scholarship to Yale.
Philanthropy
Jim is passionate about philanthropy and applying venture philanthropy and innovation models to areas such as education, the arts, and environmental sustainability. Jim is a long-time Trustee of SFMOMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles. He is actively involved in The Environmental Defense Fund and Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS).
Experience