Jeff Fluhr

Who they are

Jeff Fluhr is Venture Partner at Craft Ventures — co-founded StubHub in 2000, sold it to eBay in 2007, then co-founded Spreecast, a social video platform.

Person

Jeff Fluhr took a dual engineering and finance degree at Penn in 1996, then did a stint in finance at Blackstone Group and Thomas Weisel Partners before heading to Stanford GSB in 1999. He left Stanford early to co-found StubHub with Eric Baker in 2000 — the idea came out of a Stanford GSB business plan competition — and ran it as CEO through its sale to eBay in 2007. After the exit he went back into building: he co-founded Spreecast in 2011, a social video platform that integrated with Facebook and Twitter, and ran it as CEO until it shut down in 2017. He then moved into investing — angel work, a role at AngelHub — before joining Craft Ventures as a General Partner in 2018 when the firm was still early, having just raised its first $350 million fund. He stepped from GP to Venture Partner at Craft Ventures by April 2025. His stated focus areas are marketplace businesses, AI applications, and payments. Possibly — the GP-to-VP transition reflects a shift toward more selective, portfolio-support work rather than leading net-new deals.

Company

Craft Ventures' most recent headline is leading a $30 million growth round for ComfyUI in April 2026 at a $500 million post-money valuation — a bet on AI image and video generation infrastructure. That came alongside a same-month round for Hyfix, a U.S. drone chip startup building a domestic autonomous-systems chip as an alternative to DJI's supply chain. In 2025 the firm led a $120 million Series B for Oasis Security (agentic access management), a $33 million Series A for Daylight Security (AI-driven managed detection and response), a $42 million Series A for govtech startup Starbridge, and participated in OpenEvidence's $200 million Series C at a $6 billion valuation. The underlying fund base is the $1.32 billion closed across Craft Ventures IV and Growth II in November 2023.

Market

Craft Ventures competes directly with Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Lightspeed, Greylock, Benchmark, and Founders Fund for early-stage B2B technology deals, with over $3.5 billion AUM and a portfolio of 368 companies including 26 unicorns, 15 IPOs, and 31 acquisitions. The firm's operator-founder identity — David Sacks built and sold companies before starting the fund — differentiates it from purely financial VCs, though that positioning is increasingly common among newer funds. Geopolitical tensions and US-China trade policy are visibly shaping the portfolio, with recent investments in domestic drone chips and national security technologies reflecting an industry-wide shift toward dual-use and supply-chain-resilient bets.

Network

Jeff's most direct network at Craft Ventures includes David Sacks (Founder and General Partner), Mark Woolway (President), Brian Murray (Partner & COO), and Michael Robinson (Partner, Head of Investment Team). Sky Dayton joined Craft Ventures as a Venture Partner the same year Jeff joined, in 2018, making them peers in that transition cohort. His broader network traces back to the StubHub founding with Eric Baker and the Stanford GSB class of 2000.

David Sacks· Founder and General Partner, Craft Ventures
Mark Woolway· President, Craft Ventures
Brian Murray· Partner & COO, Craft Ventures
Michael Robinson· Partner, Head of Investment Team, Craft Ventures
Sky Dayton· Venture Partner, Craft Ventures
Eric Baker· Co-founder, StubHub

How they likely show up

Co-founded and ran StubHub as CEO from 2000 to the 2007 eBay sale → he's been through the full founder arc, not just the early innings; he likely stress-tests exit readiness, not just growth.
Built two companies (StubHub, Spreecast) before moving to investing → he brings operator pattern-matching to diligence, not just financial modeling.
Content themes cluster around marketplaces, AI applications, and payments — all transaction-infrastructure domains → he thinks about unit economics and liquidity dynamics instinctively.
Long tenure at Craft Ventures (GP from 2018, still there as Venture Partner in 2025) → comfortable with institutional continuity; not a serial job-hopper once he finds a platform that fits.
Participated in an AI Day panel at Miami Tech Week in 2023 → willing to show up in public forums but not a prolific public writer; selective about visibility.
Possibly — the GP-to-Venture Partner move signals a preference for deeper portfolio work over the deal-sourcing grind, leaning into founder coaching over cold outbound.

Conversation tips

→ Open on marketplace dynamics — StubHub is his foundational reference point and he'll have sharp, specific views on liquidity, supply-side flywhheels, and why most marketplace attempts fail.
→ Ask about the Spreecast chapter specifically — it shut down after six years, which means he has a failure arc that most investors haven't lived from the operator seat; he'll likely be candid if you ask directly.
→ Reference the ComfyUI or Hyfix investments if you want to discuss AI infrastructure — these are the freshest signals of where he's placing bets right now.
→ Don't treat him as a pure financial investor — he'll engage more if you frame problems the way a founder would ('here's what breaks at scale') rather than as a pitch deck.
→ If you write about or have views on payments or AI applications, bring a specific thesis — his stated focus areas are narrow enough that generalities will fall flat.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on StubHub's origin story — he co-founded it out of a Stanford GSB business plan competition in 2000 and ran it as CEO through the eBay sale in 2007; ask what he got wrong in year one that he'd never get wrong now.
Reference the ComfyUI lead in April 2026 at a $500 million valuation — it signals he's backing AI infrastructure at the workflow layer, which is a specific thesis worth probing.
Mention Spreecast — he ran a social video platform from 2011 to 2017 before platforms like that had a real business model; his read on what killed it (and what's different now for AI-native social) will be sharper than most.

Discovery questions

StubHub worked because it created liquidity in a market where supply and demand were structurally fragmented — when you look at AI application companies today, which ones actually have that same liquidity problem to solve?
You moved from GP to Venture Partner at Craft by 2025 — how has your working model with portfolio founders changed, and what does 'operational support' actually mean at the growth stage versus Series A?
The Hyfix investment is a bet on domestic drone chip supply chains — how do you think about the government-buyer sales cycle risk when backing national security tech at the early stage?

Avoid

Don't pitch him on a marketplace idea without having thought through the cold-start problem in detail — he built one of the defining ticket marketplaces and will immediately probe supply-side bootstrapping; showing up with a hand-wavy answer on chicken-and-egg will end the conversation early.

Make it yours