Welcome Kenny Van Zant and James Joaquin to True!

One of the most important characteristics of our team at True is our never ending desire to work with the most talented and creative entrepreneurs on the planet. As the strength of the True platform grows, we see even more opportunity to foster innovation and make the world a better place for entrepreneurs.

Most of our investment and operating strategy revolves around backing great people and building an unparalleled set of resources to enable those people to create and flourish. We believe that it’s our job to use our team and resources to support and propel the creative efforts of our Founders, whose products and creativity can change the world. Founder Camp IV last week re-affirmed the meaning behind our firm and strategy, and we came away inspired and energized by the power of the True Founders.

It is an exciting time for True and for our industry, but all of this has caused us to look inward to figure out how to better serve the growing family of True Founders.

Like most things we do, our answer is simple: great people.

Today, we announce two exceptional additions to the True family: James Joaquin and Kenny Van Zant, who have joined our firm as Special Advisors.

We have known both Kenny and James for a long time, and have had incredible experiences with each of them on many different portfolio companies.

James and Jon go back ten years, and over the last several years, James has worked closely with Om, Tony and the True portfolio. James serves on the advisory board of True portfolio company 20×200, and he has been instrumental in helping many of our consumer and e-commerce portfolio companies think about product and customers. James is masterful at design, UI and UX, and he understands through experience what it takes to scale a consumer service.

After cutting his teeth as both an engineering manager and a product manager at Apple, James went on start and run a number of startups. He founded When.com in 1998 (with three co-founders including True Founder Joe Benninato, now of Tello), which was sold to AOL in 1999. He was also the CEO of Ofoto and grew the company through it’s sale to Eastman Kodak and beyond. He later was the CEO of global payments company Xoom, then Xmarks, which he sold to LastPass in December 2010. James is as professional and personable as they come. He is playful, focused, and clear. His knowledge across consumer products, payments, and commerce is broad, and he is an incredible people person.

James is the perfect addition to our team.

Kenny Van Zant is also a serial entrepreneur who brings a wealth of experience to our firm, having built large-scale software companies from the ground up. In his role as SVP and Chief Product Strategist for Solarwinds, Kenny pioneered an innovative sales and marketing model, and deployed this model to significant scale. Kenny recently joined the team at Asana. When it comes to new product, sales, distribution and revenue models for enterprise software, there is no better expert than Kenny. We have found these skills to be especially valuable in today’s world of lower ASP, web-distributed software models and the continued movement of consumerization within the enterprise.

Kenny possesses technical depth and exceptional creativity. He is a rare talent who defines the new world of enterprise software, and his vision is perfectly aligned with ours for the future of enterprise and infrastructure investing.

Kenny is already deeply enmeshed at several True portfolio companies including Puppet Labs, Loggly, and Assistly, where his insights have been massively valuable.

Kenny is intense, high bandwidth, and insanely creative. He has boundless energy, and he is a joy to work with. Kenny’s a great guy who mixes focus and performance with openness and good humor that we value so highly at True.

Everyone at True has been an entrepreneur in the past. We believe this is critical to our ability to help the companies in which we invest, but we also recognize that past experience on the front lines is not enough. Currency counts. Relevance is essential to today’s Founders. Three of our Partners (Tony, Toni, and Om) are deeply involved in all aspects of our firm, but their real day jobs are with about.me, Automattic, and GigaOm. If you’re a Founder in our portfolio, this means that our Partnership is deeply engaged in your markets in real time. Not just as investors, but also as entrepreneurs ourselves. The addition of Kenny and James brings even more relevant thinking from the front lines of todays hottest markets into the core of our firm. Founders helping Founders, at the core of True.

We’re immensely honored by the addition of James and Kenny to True. With them we continue our tradition of teaming with world-class Founders with proven expertise that share the True vision for innovation, creativity and success!

Please join me in welcoming James and Kenny to True!

You can follow James and Kenny on Twitter at: @jamesjoaquin and @kennyvz