Jim Hornthal

Jim Hornthal divides his professional time between venture capital and entrepreneurship. His active angel investing activities are complemented by his role as a Venture Partner with CMEA Capital, an established venture capital firm with $1.2 billion under management that invests primarily in early-stage technology, energy, and life science companies.

As an entrepreneur, Hornthal co-founded and currently serves as the Chairman of several enterprises including Triporati/Algorithm Engines, Zignal Labs, LaunchPad Central (now GLIDR.io), and M34 Capital. He is well-known for founding Preview Travel, one of the first online travel agencies. He took Preview Travel public in 1997, and later initiated its merger in 2000 with a division of Sabre Holdings to create Travelocity.com, where he served as Vice Chairman of the combined organization. Travelocity.com was ultimately re-acquired by Sabre Holdings in 2002.

Hornthal is also a Lester Center Fellow for Entrepreneurship at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley since 2002, where he teaches The Lean Launchpad course. He has taught at Princeton and Stanford and has been part of the National Science Foundation’s iCorps Teaching Team at UCSF and Stanford. His philanthropic endeavors focus on mentoring social entrepreneurs and he has previously chaired the YPO/WPO Peace Action Network (PAN). He co-founded and serves as co-Chair of the Arab American Action Forum (A3F), and is a Trustee for The One Voice Movement. Additionally, Hornthal is an advisor to Just Vision, an active member of The Council on Foreign Relations, and a delegate to President Obama’s Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. He was a founding participant in the Clinton Global Initiative. His TED Book is titled "A Haystack Full of Needles".

Hornthal lives in San Francisco with his wife of 30 years, Bethany, and their two golden doodles, Snicker and Cleo. Their daughter, Becca, is a graduate of Tufts University; Class of 2011, and their son, Joshua, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania; Class of 2013. He received a BA in Economics from Princeton University cum laude, and his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.