John is Co-Founder and General Partner at Character Capital, a Milwaukee-based seed-stage venture capital firm that supports startups with capital and proprietary sprint methodologies. He is bestselling author of Sprint, Make Time, and Click, with articles published in The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Wired, and Fast Company.

John was a design partner at Google Ventures from 2011 to 2017, where he co-created the Design Sprint process with Jake Knapp and worked with nearly 200 portfolio companies. Previously, he held design leadership roles at YouTube, Google Ads, and FeedBurner, which was acquired by Google in 2007.

John has helped more than 300 teams design new products and bring them to market since 2005. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Human Ecology, where he now serves as an advisor to the dean and faculty.

Character Capital raised a $52 million second fund in 2024 and has invested in nearly 50 startups, including Phaidra, Fathom, Orbital Materials, and Inductive Bio. The firm writes checks up to $2 million and runs Character Labs, a four-week accelerator program focused on product-market fit.

At Google Ventures, John supported many of GV's most successful investments including Slack, One Medical Group, Flatiron Health, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Gusto. Character Capital closed on more than $30 million for its first fund in late 2021 and has seen two portfolio acquisitions, Reclaim (acquired by Dropbox) and HeadsUp.