J Zac Stein and Georg Ell Join Craft as Venture Partners

J Zac Stein and Georg Ell Join Craft as Venture Partners

It is rare to find investors and operators who have unique insight into SaaS and/or marketplace businesses and share Craft’s founder-first ethos. When we find them, we try to bring them onboard. Today, we are thrilled to welcome J Zac Stein and Georg Ell as Venture Partners.

This past summer, we announced Craft Ventures III ($612 million) and Craft Ventures Growth I ($510 million), bringing our total assets under management to $2 billion. J Zac and Georg are an important part of our Fund III strategy: they will help us double down on SaaS investments, expand our network, expertise, and geographic footprint as we expand to Europe.

A seasoned operator and investor, J Zac is President & Chief Product Officer of Lattice, a people management platform that empowers people leaders to build engaged, high-performing teams. J Zac serves as an independent Board Member at Vanta, and an angel investor in AgentSync, Calixa, Parabola, Rewatch, Rupa Health, Time by Ping, Trace, UserLeap among other companies. J Zac’s experience and strong network are invaluable to SaaS start-ups and will create new investment opportunities for Craft. J Zac will continue in his current role at Lattice.

Georg is CEO of Smoothwall, a high growth, education safety-tech startup based in London. Prior to joining Smoothwall, Georg was Tesla’s Director for Western Europe and served as General Manager, EMEA for Yammer, acquired by Microsoft for $1.2B. Georg will be based in London, and will lead the charge to grow Craft’s footprint in Europe. Georg will continue to lead Smoothwall as CEO.

Welcome to the team!