Silicon Valley Insider: JD Vance, Trump’s Choice for Vice President, Boasts Extensive Venture Capital Background

In a pivotal move on Monday, former President Donald Trump announced Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential candidate in his bid to win back the presidency from Joe Biden in the 2022 elections.

Renowned for his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance transitioned from a venture capitalist to a political figure after his 2022 election to the U.S. Senate.

Following his graduation from Yale Law School in 2013, Vance relocated to San Francisco to work as a principal at Mithril Capital, a venture fund established by Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan. The fund successfully raised two major rounds of investment, totaling $540 million in 2013 and $850 million in 2017. Despite Thiel’s active political support for Trump’s initial presidential run in 2016 and his financial assistance in Vance’s Senate campaign, he has announced a halt in donations to Republicans for the 2024 election period.

In 2017, Vance made the move to join Steve Case’s Revolution in Washington, D.C., as a managing director, a change prompted by his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, gaining a position as a Supreme Court clerk.

While with Revolution, Vance contributed to the development of the Rise of the Rest initiative with Case, concentrating on investments in startups located outside the traditional tech corridors. He played pivotal roles in investments in startups like the Michigan-based Aatmunn, which focuses on creating software and wearable technology for construction site safety, and Kentucky’s AppHarvest, an indoor farming company that went public via a SPAC in 2021, only to seek bankruptcy protection in 2023.

Vance, however, stayed out of the activity in Revolution’s second Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, which secured $150 million in 2019. Concurrently, he was channeling his efforts into raising capital for his own Cincinnati-based venture, Narya Capital, which by early 2020 had gathered $93 million towards a $125 million goal, drawing support from notable investors including Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Eric Schmidt. Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a later Republican presidential candidate and VP hopeful under Trump, was also an investor, per Axios.

Narya, mirroring the ambitions of Rise of the Rest, is vested in nurturing startups in overlooked U.S. regions. Though Steve Case’s involvement in Narya’s initial funding is not confirmed, the AOL co-founder has openly distanced himself from Vance’s political pursuits and ideologies.

“Since he declared his Senate candidacy last year, I haven’t communicated with [Vance], nor have I supported his political endeavors,” mentioned Steve Case to TechCrunch in September 2022.

Upon his Senate victory, Vance reduced his engagement with Narya, leaving its operations in the hands of co-founder Colin Greenspon, a past associate of the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and a former Mithril managing director. Narya is currently working towards its second fund, aiming at $125 million, as disclosed in a SEC filing from late 2022.