James Hill

James Hill is a General Partner at Grand Ventures, a Grand Rapids, Michigan–based early-stage venture firm founded in 2017 that has raised more than $80M across two funds (Fund I, ~$28M, closed 2019; Fund II, $50M, closed October 2023). He joined the firm as a partner in March 2024 to lead its digital-health vertical; Grand Ventures organizes its General Partners around core verticals, with Hill owning healthcare/digital health alongside partners covering fintech, DevOps, and supply chain. He brings more than ten years of venture and growth-equity experience across healthcare information technology, enterprise software, and financial technology.

Before Grand Ventures, Hill was Vice President of Venture Capital and Private Equity at First Trust Capital Partners, the private-investment arm of an asset manager with $200B+ in AUM and 90+ portfolio companies. There he led a portfolio of healthcare and fintech deals including Phynd Technologies, SteadyMD, TouchCare, ClinOne, ProofPilot, Circuit Clinical, Korio, and Flexwise Health. (The "FT Capital Partners" firm name and [hidden] email in the stub data correspond to this First Trust role — "FT" for First Trust.)

Earlier, from 2013 to 2019, Hill was a Vice President at Edison Partners, a growth-equity firm targeting high-growth fintech, healthcare IT, and vertical SaaS companies located outside Silicon Valley. He managed the digital-health and fintech investment pipelines, led the Edison Director Network, helped close more than ten growth-stage investments, and served as a board director for multiple healthcare portfolio companies.

Hill holds a Bachelor's degree in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and earned both an MBA in Finance and a JD focused on corporate law from Michigan State University.

• Invests at pre-seed and seed (with follow-on through Series A/B), typically leading rounds with checks in the ~$500K–$3M range at Grand Ventures.
• Personal specialization in digital health / healthcare IT — brought on specifically to deepen Grand Ventures' healthcare bench, with fintech as a secondary focus rooted in his First Trust and Edison track record.
• Focus on B2B / enterprise SaaS business models rather than consumer.
• Backs companies in emerging tech regions beyond the coasts (US and Canada), consistent with the "outside Silicon Valley" thesis he executed at Edison and continues at a Midwest-based fund.
• On what makes him say yes in healthcare data infrastructure, his own words on the Navidence deal: *"As real-world data becomes increasingly central to drug development and regulatory decision-making, the industry needs more than access to data—it needs clarity, consistency, and trust in how that data is defined and used."*