A serial entrepreneur and investor in many startups, Jonathan is Chairman and co-founder of Geekwire.com, one of the tech sector’s top news sites, and Founder of PicMonkey, the world’s most fun and popular photo-editor still serving millions of customers monthly. He is currently also the owner and publisher of the re-booted Seattle Magazine and Seattle Business Magazine, where the legacy brands founded by Seattle’s Bullitt sisters 70 years ago, are now back in local ownership.
He also has the distinct honor of being the first person to sell 2 companies to Google, and then a third to Shutterstock.
Jonathan’s latest venture is JoySauce.com, an “American Asian” centered platform designed to showcase more TV shows, movies, Podcasts, and incisive editorial from emerging AAPI talent. JoySauce has been acknowledged by the prestigious Center for Asian American Media and GLAAD.org for it’s amplification and inclusion of marginalized voices.
In 2016, Jonathan made headlines when he announced he would be the first technology investor to only invest in female-founded companies moving forward. This put Jonathan in the national spotlight and he became an honoree of various women-led organizations such as American Women In Science, Vital Voices, and the University of Washington’s “Man of Integrity” award.
Lest you think Jonathan hasn’t done his time at big companies, in the early ‘90’s Jonathan was a senior manager in Microsoft’s consumer division, personally delivering the next level of thought on key Microsoft properties to chairman Bill Gates and the company’s leadership, as well as having been a key player in the formation of Xbox, the Xbox games business, and various MSN applications.
Jonathan is a graduate of Whitman College, where he is on the Board of Trustees.
For a brief period of time, Jonathan was the co-owner of the ‘Spitfire’ in Seattle’s belltown, where he first met Dow Constantine and shared a beer or two with our future King County Executive : ).
