Joanna Earl

Joanna Drake Earl is Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Magnify Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on the care economy. Magnify says it invests in pre-seed and seed-stage companies, typically writing checks of $250K to $2M, and backs founders “transforming the full spectrum of family life.”

Before Magnify, Joanna began her investing career as a General Partner at Core Ventures Group, where she co-managed two funds and a portfolio of more than twenty seed-stage companies. Core Ventures Group’s site says Shinya Akamine founded the firm in 2012 and recruited Joanna Drake shortly afterward as a Co-Founding General Partner; the firm focused on seed-stage companies with proven business models and advanced technologies.

Earlier in her career, Joanna was an operator in media and technology. Her Broadway Angels profile says she was Chief Operating Officer for DeNA West, overseeing operations outside Asia, and spent nearly ten years as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Current TV, where she was the first executive to join co-founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt. Current TV was sold to Al Jazeera in 2013.

She also held executive roles at ReacTV and Moxi during the late-1990s web-startup wave, and began her career as a Senior Associate in Booz Allen & Hamilton’s media and technology consulting practices. She holds a master’s degree focused on Japanese business from Stanford University and a BA in Political Economy from UC Berkeley.

• Magnify’s thesis is care-economy specific: “The fundamentals of family life are enduring. The systems around it are being rebuilt. We back the founders of the new care economy.”
• Magnify invests at pre-seed and seed, typically $250K to $2M.
• Focus areas include prenatal and maternal care, family mental health, AI for the home, family fintech, value-based care, longevity sciences, care infrastructure, assistive robotics, at-home healthcare, aging-in-place technology, workplace benefits, and family cybersecurity.
• Core Ventures Group’s stated founder focus was “curious and ambitious founders of the highest character and integrity” building well-rounded business and technical teams; the firm said it primarily invested in seed-stage companies with proven business models and advanced technologies.
• Joanna’s operating background suggests a fit for founders building category-defining companies in technology-enabled family, care, media, and consumer/community infrastructure markets.