Jake Wayne

Jake Wayne is a New York–based venture builder and early-stage investor whose career began as a founder. While a student at the University of Michigan, he co-founded Companion, a consumer personal-safety app, and served as its CEO and co-founder from roughly 2014 to 2019. Companion — which let users share a walk home, loop in friends/family to monitor them, request help from nearby users, and reach 911 with one tap — gained rapid early traction, reportedly reaching more than a million users across many countries within months and drawing national media attention (including a Today Show feature). He earned a Bachelor of Science in Information (BSI), focused on User Experience/User Interface, from the University of Michigan (2012–2016).

After Companion, Jake moved into venture capital. He joined Torch Capital — the NYC brand- and consumer-focused firm founded by Jonathan Keidan in 2018 — as an investor from June 2019 to February 2022 (this is the source of his [hidden] address). Torch backs mission-driven consumer and, more recently, AI-powered companies, with a portfolio that has included Sweetgreen, Acorns, Compass, DigitalOcean, Naadam, Recess and others; the firm has grown to $400M+ in AUM across multiple funds.

He then spent February 2022 to February 2024 as an investor at Habitat Partners, another New York early-stage venture firm, before returning to company-building. Since March 2024 he has been Founder & Builder at Steadfast Partners, splitting his time between launching new ventures and advising/consulting early-stage startups from concept to execution. His self-described current projects include FastTrack (windshield repair), Troop (a B2B executive network), and ByeBite (mosquito-bite patches).

• Invests at the earliest stages — pre-seed, seed, and Series A — with a founder-first, execution-oriented lens; his own framing is about "building the right thing, the right way" and turning problems into scalable businesses.
• Sector lean reflects his consumer roots and VC experience: mission-driven consumer brands (food & beverage, cosmetics, e-commerce), plus marketing tech, analytics, and fintech, and consumer-facing/B2B software.
• Brings an operator's perspective — as a former founder/CEO who scaled a consumer product quickly — which shapes how he evaluates product, UX, and go-to-market.
• Aggregator profiles list a check range of roughly $100K–$5.0M with a ~$1.5M sweet spot; treat these figures as directional rather than firm-confirmed.