Thunder

We're a tech-enabled investment bank for founders, by founders. We help companies navigate their capital strategy for acquiring funding to fuel their growth.

Founders: AI-assisted fundraising for companies. Join the network for free to see which investors are more likely to invest in you.

Investors: Access vetted deal flow and invest with no fees direct on cap table

Thunder X Capital, LLC offers securities through Stonehaven, LLC, a Member FINRA/ SIPC.

Managing Director & Founding Partner

Interplay

Operating Partner

PEF Community

Brining together the London PEF community

Chapter Lead

Hustle Fund

Angel Squad Member

Angel Investor & RE/VC/PE LP

Investor / Advisor 

Generation Esports

President & COO

Walmart Technology

Director Of Digital Media

LiquidSky Software, Inc. (Acquired)

Chief Revenue Officer

ConveyIQ by Entelo

VP of Marketing

Misc Small Businesses and Startups

Built, grew, and sold a few small businesses that are still actively running today.

Founder

I'm a serial entrepreneur that has raised $135M+ and has had multiple exits. I'm now on a mission to support founders with their capital strategy and acquire the capital they need to grow their businesses. 

Thunder.vc is a tech-enabled investment bank for founders, by founders.

When it comes to supporting the founders in our Thunder.vc community, here are some free resources that can help you with your capital raising efforts.

 - Fundraising Demystified newsletter - Sign up at http://join.thunder.vc
 - Free list of AI-recommended VCs specific to your business - https://web.thunder.vc/list-of-investors-vcs-for-founders 
 - Free tool to source lending partners for your working capital needs - https://lp.thunder.vc/apply-for-working-capital-for-your-startup-company
 - Private Slack community for founders - Apply to join at https://app.thunder.vc/signup

Jason Kirby

Founders think raising capital is hard.
Try selling your company while running it. ⚙️

If you’re a founder thinking about selling in 2026, here’s your M&A survival guide (from two people who’ve done it the hard way):

5 Steps to Sell Smart - Not Desperate:

1️⃣ Start early. Build relationships with strategics 12–18 months before you plan to sell. Seek partnerships, integrations, and POCs in the early days to build trust and rapport with them.

2️⃣ Know your numbers. Buyers don’t fund dreams; they fund predictability. After a few intro calls you'll know if you're ready or not with the numbers.

3️⃣ Run a process. Competitive tension is your best negotiation leverage. In today’s market, selling to a strategic is harder; that's why you need to prepare for a private equity buyer, it keeps strategics honest and makes them move faster.

4️⃣ Avoid the earnout trap. Structure cash up front. Earnouts sound great, but rarely workout. Maintain control over the KPIs of an earnout or drop the earnout all together.

5️⃣ Control your narrative. Don’t let your board, your VC, or your emotions run the process. If you're not 100% behind the narrative, it will fall apart.

Bonus6️⃣ Don't run a process without help. Selling your company is a full-time job, similar to fundraising, but even harder. As the CEO, you'll be expected to hit your targets. Having a banker or board member leading the process allows you to stay focus and drive momentum on both fronts.
  
If you want to explore M&A and want to pick someone's brain, comment below or send Oliver Low a DM! He leads M&A deals at Thunder.vc and sold his previous company, he knows what it's like to be in your shoes.

4x Exits, $100M+ Raised. Helping founders raise/exit with clarity, control, and conviction.

I just denied an applicant solely because they have a @hotmail email address. Does that make me a bad person?

I'm looking for tech forward partners who have a deep understanding of technology companies. 

If I was one of my clients and saw that the partner that's supposed to competently understand my business had a hotmail account... I'd immediately discount their abilities. That's my justification.

Is that a fair assessment? or am I just an a** hole

If you're a founder looking to hire a PR in the middle of a crisis, it's likely too late and the damage will get worse.

David Meadvin (CEO, One Strategy Group) breaks down why even the best crisis consultants can’t fix what founders don’t already have... trust.

If your reputation isn’t built before the storm hits, you’re in for a rough time.

💡 2 actionable truths from David’s experience:

1. Your reputation is earned long before crisis day. The founders who invest in team trust and transparent communication recover fastest.

2. The calmest person in the room wins. When everyone panics, composure becomes a superpower, and the board will remember it.

Founders: Don’t wait until you’re trending for the wrong reason.
Start building your “reputation reserve” now.

👇 Watch/listen to the full story:

Watch the full video here. Most founders think they’ll never face a real crisis, until they do. In this episode, David Meadvin shares what happens whe

Open article: The $100M founder’s playbook for surviving bad press by Jason Kirby • 2 min read

The $100M founder’s playbook for surviving bad press

I'm hiring a partner to join Thunder.vc... anyone else getting the AI slop applications like these?

Like they're not even trying to mask the AI. I've gotten like 10 of these identical applications via email. Their cover letters make them sound like a perfect fit, but the resume and the past jobs are WAY off, like not relevant at all. And they all say the same thing.

I hope these desperate people aren't paying for a service like this. I've already created a filter to block them.

For those of you hiring, how obvious has been the AI and what are you doing about it?

Spoke my mind on the AI bubble and where I think it's going and shared some personal deal dynamics I rarely mention publicly. Check it out on the The Mergers podcast

Jason Kirby sold his startup for $40M - but only after the CEO of Samsung Electronics went to prison and nearly blew up the deal.

Investors got greedy.

The new Samsung CEO shut everything down.

Jason's team showed up at 9am to celebrate… and there was nothing to announce.

Welcome to the world of venture capital — where founders are often left holding the bag.

This week on The Mergers, Kenneth Kashif Thomas and Rory Mason sat down with Jason Kirby, now founder of Thunder.vc, to hear the wild behind-the-scenes of what really happens when you raise, scale, and try to exit a venture-backed company.

Jason has:

- Raised $100M+, 
- Sold 4 companies
- Advised on $200M+ in founder exits
- Navigated M&A deals with Walmart, Samsung, Verizon... and lived to tell the tale
- Watched VCs ghost founders when they no longer show “breakout velocity”
- Built Thunder VC to help bootstrapped and “orphaned” founders find exits, growth capital, or both

In this episode:

🖊️ What most founders get dead wrong about term sheets, preferences, and secondary sales
🖊️ The dirty secret of management fees and why VCs often win even when startups lose
🖊️ How to create “phantom leverage” when you have no options left
🖊️ Why AI is a bubble — and why that might not matter

If you’re a founder, investor, or operator - you need to hear this

🎧 Listen here: https://lnkd.in/dDCNNsTr
 📺 Watch the full episode: https://lnkd.in/eNztGnxG

When Oliver Low sold his startup, he thought he’d hit the dream exit.

Instead, he walked straight into a trap most founders never see coming:

The earnout...

He hit his growth targets, but the parent company missed theirs — and the big payout disappeared.

Nine out of ten earnouts fail for this exact reason.

That’s why, at Thunder, we help founders structure exits, not just chase them.

Here’s the truth no one tells you:

Selling early isn’t losing. It’s creating optionality.

Once you have liquidity, you can take bigger swings, with less risk — and 10x your next outcome.

But you only get there if you understand deal architecture: competitive process, buyer psychology, and clean incentives.

Oliver Low breaks it down in this week’s episode:
 🎧 “How to Sell Your Startup: The Founder’s M&A Playbook”

💡 Tactical takeaways:
- How to avoid the 9/10 earnout failure rate
- Why selling in the fourth inning is often smarter than waiting
- How private equity is changing founder exits forever

Listen on: Youtube Spotify Apple Most founders wait too long to sell and end up losing leverage. In this episode, Jason Kirby and Oliver Low share the

Open article: The M&A playbook for founders in 2025 by Jason Kirby • 2 min read

He left venture capital to help take Life360 from Seed to a $7B public company. 

When Itamar Novick joined Life360, it wasn’t yet the household name it is today. The team was small. The product was early. The vision was big but uncertain. 

Like every early-stage company, there were challenges: 

💬 Raising VC capital was tough. 
💸 The company didn’t have much cash. 
🚀 The future was uncertain. 

But instead of staying in VC, Itamar made the rare move, he joined the founding team, betting his career & his networth on building something lasting. 

Years later, that decision helped shape Life360’s journey to 80M users, $200M+ raised, and a dual listing on the ASX and NASDAQ.

In our latest episode of $100M Exits, Itamar shares: 

🔥 Why he left venture to join a scrappy startup 
🔥 How Life360 scaled from early chaos to IPO readiness
🔥 What founders can learn from dual IPOs and post-IPO growth

Watch the full video here. When Itamar Novick joined Life360, it wasn’t yet a global brand — it was a small, ambitious startup still proving itself. T

Open article: The VC who quit to build a $7B company - Itamar Novick on Life360’s wild ride by Jason Kirby • 2 min read

The VC who quit to build a $7B company - Itamar Novick on Life360’s wild ride

Top Shelf Ventures

A venture fund focused on finding, funding, and accelerating the best opportunities in the broader beverage alcohol and consumer vice spaces.

Co-Founder and Managing Partner

Loeb Enterprises

Loeb.NYC is a New York based business development lab and private investor, focused on cultivating opportunities in emerging media and consumer marketing. Loeb.NYC, led by entrepreneur and highly successful CEO Michael Loeb, maintains a team of world-class operators, direct marketing executives and technologists that apply themselves to a select number of strategically important businesses each year.

I advise the executive team on investments across a number of industries and spearhead the Uncharted Community with Michael Loeb. Uncharted is a community of the world's best founders and funders anchored by a monthly dinner series in NYC and annual summit in Southampton.

Uncharted Community Co-Founder & CEO | Advisor

Gratsi 

Investor and Board Member

SUNBOY Spiked Coconut Water

The Long Drink Company

Investor + Advisor

6FTCloser

Digital platform focused on elevating gratitude and mental health.  Featured in Techcrunch, Mashable, Fox News, Adweek, NBC News and ABC News.

Started in March 2020 originally as a way to send thank you messages to front line healthcare workers, the platform became one of the most viral and impactful businesses created in response to the pandemic.

Co-Founder

Spent about two years as the founding COO of 3x3, a Loeb portfolio company building marketing and analytics products for the beverage alcohol industry.

I spearheaded the go-to-market strategy and built and managed a team of 10+ to build and scale the fastest growing network of liquor retailers (2000+) ever in the industry.

Learned the ins and outs of the booze industry in just about every way.

Loeb.nyc is a startup lab and early-stage private investor, providing portfolio companies with access to hands-on advisors, strategic partners, and mentorship. Select portfolio companies are housed in a modern space in Midtown Manhattan.

I spent my Sophomore summer working with the new ventures team in New York City and became the Boston-based representative during my Junior Year. 

This role has offered me the chance to work with awesome people, meet with great entrepreneurs, explore new ventures, and build business plans to capitalize on potential market opportunities. It has been a unique opportunity to gain first-hand experience working in venture capital at a young age.

Venture Associate (Undergraduate) 

MakerBot®

I spent my Freshman year summer working with the US Channel Sales Team at MakerBot, the industry leader in Desktop 3D Printing, scanning and entertainment. I gained real experience in some crucial components of running a business including, but not limited to direct sales, structuring sales teams, building sales strategies, account management, analytics/reporting and navigating through a quickly scaling business. Through my own sourcing and outreach, I increased the reach and sales of the US Channel by signing up new resellers and effectively managing their accounts.

Channel Sales

Self

Trained theater and film actor with experience in most fields of performance (theater, film, print, musical theater). Acting is a passion of mine that serves as both an artistic outlet, and a useful tool for public speaking, presenting and social development. I have not, nor will I ever, rule acting out as a possible career choice.

NYC Agent: CESD
Boston Agent: Maggie

Actor

Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Top Shelf Ventures - a venture and private equity fund focused on the biggest opportunities in the multi-trillion dollar alcohol & vices industries. 

Also Co-Founder of Uncharted with Michael Loeb: a community of world class founders and investors anchored by a monthly dinner series and annual summit. 


Goal and growth-oriented, and obsessively entrepreneurial, I am passionate about creating, scaling and growing great businesses. My experience and passions lie at the intersection of technology, media, CPG and communication. I have a background in acting/production, which has been a fundamental building block for how I approach business, communication, and people.

Avid athlete (Ironman, weightlifting, ice hockey, etc)
 

Feel free to reach out! (Will do my best to reply🙏!)

Noah Sanborn Friedman

Hosted 20 AI founders & funders for a powerful Uncharted dinner last night. 

2 hours of a poignant, single-threaded dialog about the state of the AI market and the challenges/opportunities ahead. 

Always such an honor to host & moderate these discussions 🙏

Co-Founder of Top Shelf Ventures | Co-Founder of Uncharted

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