Jay Bhatti is a seasoned entrepreneur, technologist, and venture investor with a career spanning startups, corporate strategy, and early-stage investing. He began his professional journey as a product leader at Microsoft, fulfilling a lifelong dream to work at the company and building deep expertise in enterprise technology strategy. Following that, Jay co-founded Spock.com, one of the earliest and most successful people-search engines, which quickly became one of the top global search properties and attracted significant media attention from outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, BusinessWeek, and major broadcast news networks. Jay’s experience founding, scaling, and eventually selling Spock laid the foundation for his long-term focus on innovation, product-driven growth, and the future of search and data.
Jay is a founding venture partner at BrandProject Capital, an active angel investor, and a voice in the broader startup ecosystem working with direct-to-consumer and tech-enabled companies. He has been recognized with honors such as a nomination for Venture Capitalist of the Year in New Jersey and was appointed co-chair of the Tech Innovation Transition Team for Governor Phil Murphy, helping shape state-level policy around technology and innovation. Outside of investing, Jay writes on topics ranging from startup advice to AI and innovation on Medium, and he remains deeply engaged in the tech community—continuously learning, coding, and mentoring founders building the next generation of companies.