Jeff Wasson
Title: Partner
Company: Cutina Group
Major: Travel and Tourism
Graduation Year: 1995
Jeff Wasson is an entrepreneur, investor, and mentor. Jeff is a graduate of the University of Missouri and was honored by his college as the Executive-in-Residence in 2017. Jeff's career started as a founder of TravelNow.com, and as CEO, Jeff led the company through start-up and expansion, taking the company public on the NASDAQ prior to selling the company to Hotels.com. TravelNow.com continues to operate as a part of Expedia.com Jeff continued his entrepreneurial career by founding two additional travel-related start-up companies, EZTrip and then Gusto, which he ran as CEO until 2011. After exiting the travel technology world and taking a two-and-a-half-year hiatus to travel the world with his wife and two daughters, he re-emerged in Silicon Valley, ready to find the next big thing. In 2013, Jeff moved to Palo Alto, California, and joined the Sand Hill Angels investment group, the nation’s most active angel investment group, where he served as Vice President. In 2015 Jeff became an early investor and partner in the venture capital firm Boost VC, the world’s most active fund for bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and virtual and augmented reality companies. Jeff currently lives in Springfield, Missouri, where he continues to invest in and operate a variety of companies. With 25 years of operational experience from start-up to sale, Jeff has seen, if not all of it, most of it, having raised millions in capital and having employed hundreds during his tenure. An overlapping 15+ years of personally investing in early-stage companies has given Jeff the start-up experience from another lens. Jeff has worked on every continent except Antarctica and brings to bear the global perspective needed in today's world.
Skillsets: Customer discovery, Branding, Partnerships, Operations, Growth
Industries: Agnostic
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