Congrats Jax! AirTree’s Newest Principal
By: James Cameron
Tags: Startups, Technology, Startupaus, VC, Insights

One of the best things about being a VC is seeing the founders you’ve backed start to hit their straps and really show the world what they’ve got. But there’s one thing that even tops that — when you see your own team members do the same.

That’s why we’re absolutely thrilled to announce that one of our very own superstars — Jax Vullinghs — has been promoted to Principal at AirTree.

This sort of promotion is a very big deal for us and for Jax — and so I wanted to share a little about what it means, and why we’re so lucky to be working with her.

Jax first joined our little team back in 2018 and she had an immediate impact. Her intelligence, growth mindset and passion were all apparent from day one, and in a short period of time she’s helped us lead new and follow-on investments into companies like Canva, Spaceship, MetaOptima and A Cloud Guru (plus another couple that haven’t been announced quite yet).

Jax has shown herself to be an extremely thesis-driven investor. As anyone who’s read her substack knows, she thinks deeply about tech, markets and platform shifts. She’s a voracious reader of anything she can get her hands on — from psychology to economic history to academic journals to poetry. The breadth of her interests is staggering, and it means she can connect dots across markets and industries in ways that others can miss. Jax has already done a huge amount to further our thinking in the D2C, fintech and healthcare spaces in particular.

At the same time, Jax is an incredibly people-driven investor. She’s got a natural empathy with founders and a knack for connecting people together and building warm and supportive communities. Anyone who has been to one of her OnDeck dinners, or to a 10-to-100 event can vouch for this.

And driving all of this is a sense of genuine curiosity. I have a theory that of all the various personality traits, success in VC correlates most highly with curiosity. Jax is a great example of this. She’s naturally interested about technology, and even more so about people. When she talks to founders she wants to understand who they are and what makes them tick. She leads with curiosity in everything she does. You can’t fake this — and founders love it.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. I asked a few great founders to get their thoughts:

“Jax is the kind of impressive human you rarely meet. She’s friendly, super intelligent, and committed to success. I look forward to her Substacks every couple of weeks, including the impressive array of books, blogs, and podcasts she devours. Jax was the first to introduce me to the AirTree crew, and several meetings later, we’ve still not run out of things to talk about, and I’m pretty sure I’ve learnt something new from Jax every time we’ve met. What a super star” — Dom Pym, CEO @ Up “Jax has provided some great support to Spaceship. Her constructive ‘checking and challenging’ has ensured we have been able to put our best foot forward, despite the uncertain business and macro environment. She’s also been very proactive in helping us make the most of the AirTree network and connections, providing introductions that have given us some exciting new business opportunities to pursue” — Andrew Moore, CEO @ Spaceship “Jax has a unique vision focused mind that gets to the core of our business almost immediately. It’s refreshing to skip the standard questioning and dive into exciting conversation about our potential and the real opportunity.” — Alex Zaccaria, CEO @ Linktree “Jax is one of the most insightful thinkers on consumer trends and brands in Australia, she’s been a valuable source of feedback throughout our time building Eucalyptus and i’m excited for the founders who are going to get to work closely with her in the future.”— Tim Doyle, CEO @ Eucalyptus

The new role

So what does this role change mean in practice? A lot. Like Elicia McDonald (who was also promoted to Principal at AirTree last year), Jax will now be leading her own investments and sitting on boards of our portfolio companies. That’s pretty great news for founders.

And what sort of founders is Jax looking for? I thought it was best to ask her directly:

“People whose eyes light up when they tell you how they’re solving a complex problem in a novel way. Who are both rational and emotional when describing how they’re going to build the team to tackle this problem in the next 6 weeks and the next 6 years. And who are good people first.” Jax

If you haven’t met Jax yet — you’re missing out. Send her a quick hello on twitter or via email at jackie [at] airtree (dot) vc.