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Jason Pontin

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Jason Pontin
Born (1967-05-11) 11 May 1967 (age 57)
London, England
NationalityBritish
EducationHarrow School,
University of Oxford
Alma materKeble College, Oxford
Occupation(s)Venture Capitalist, editor, journalist, and publisher
Years active1996 - present

Jason Matthew Daniel Pontin (born 11 May 1967) is a British-born venture capitalist and journalist. He is a General Partner at the venture capital firm of DCVC in Palo Alto, and is a board member and seed investor in a number of life sciences companies. He is the former editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review.

Early life and education

Pontin was born on 11 May 1967 in London, to a British father, Anthony Charles Pontin, a businessman, and a South African mother, Elaine Howells, an actress.[1] He was raised in Northern California and educated in England, at Harrow School[2] and Oxford University.[3]

Career

From 1996 to 2002, Pontin was the Editor of Red Herring, a business and technology publication.[4] From 2002 to 2004, he was the Editor of The Acumen Journal, a now-defunct magazine he founded about the life sciences.[5]

Pontin has written for many national and international magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times,[6] The Economist, The Financial Times,[7] The Boston Globe,[8] The Believer Magazine,[9] and Wired.[10] He writes for Wired in the publication's "IDEAS" channel and contributes to the magazine.[11] In February 2013, he delivered a TED Talk in Long Beach, California, "Can Technology solve our big problems?" that has been seen more than 1.6 million times.[12]

He was hired as the editor of Technology Review in July 2004,[13] and in August 2005 was named publisher. Pontin engaged in what The Boston Globe has described as a "strategic overhaul" of Technology Review, whose goal is to make the magazine into a largely electronic publishing company.[14] In October 2012, he renamed the organization MIT Technology Review and relaunched it as a "digital-first enterprise". AdWeek commented that "Pontin and MIT Technology Review could set the standard for the transition to a digital future for legacy media."[15] Pontin was Chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum, MIT's global organization of technology entrepreneurs.[16]

From 2005 to 2017, he was the Editor in Chief and Publisher of MIT Technology Review.[17][18]

In 2015, he cofounded MIT Solve[19] the Institute's open innovation platform, which deploys capital and other resources towards solutions to grand challenges.[20]

From 2018 to 2020, he was Senior Partner and senior advisor at Flagship Pioneering, an American life sciences venture capital company in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[21][22][23][24]

In 2019, with CEO Neil Dhawan, he cofounded Totus Medicines, a chemical biology company whose drug discovery platform uses structure-based design, combinatorial chemistry, and automated biophysics to rapidly identify oncology therapies. Pontin is a board member of Totus Medicines. [25]

Pontin has been a General Partner at DCVC since March 2021.[26][27][28]

References

  1. ^ "British 1820 Settlers to South Africa". 1820settlers.com.
  2. ^ "Directory profile". Harrow Association. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  3. ^ "Jason Pontin | World Economic Forum". Weforum.org. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  4. ^ Kurtz, Howard (18 May 2001). "For the Press, Too, a Fall From the Hypes". The Washington Post. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  5. ^ Michael Liedtke (13 May 2003). "Ex-Red Herring Editor Set to Launch Mag – The Edwardsville Intelligencer". Theintelligencer.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  6. ^ "From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet". The New York Times. 22 April 2007.
  7. ^ "Imitators take note – Steve Jobs was more than a showman". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 1 January 2017.(subscription required)
  8. ^ "A good meal, unexpected, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  9. ^ "The Believer – Dawit Giorgis: An Oral History". The Believer. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  10. ^ "The Micro-Multinational". Wired. 1 July 2004. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  11. ^ "Jason Pontin | WIRED". www.wired.com. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  12. ^ "Jason Pontin: Can technology solve our big problems? | TED Talk". TED.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  13. ^ "M.I.T. Technology Review Adopts More Serious Tone". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  14. ^ "MIT tech journal getting new publisher, overhaul – The Boston Globe". Boston Globe. 30 August 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  15. ^ Warzel, Charlie (24 October 2012). "MIT Technology Review Relaunches 'Digital-First'". Adweek.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  16. ^ "MIT Technology Review". Technologyreview.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  17. ^ "Pontin named publisher of Technology Review". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  18. ^ "Our Team". MIT Technology Review. Technologyreview.com. Archived from the original on 17 March 2020. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
  19. ^ "Solve". Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  20. ^ "Solving the world's great challenges". news.mit.edu. 15 October 2015. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  21. ^ "What the US will be like after we conquer the coronavirus - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com.
  22. ^ Strumpf, Dan (28 February 2020). "WSJ News Exclusive | Huawei Seeks Advisers for U.S. Image Makeover" – via www.wsj.com.
  23. ^ "Social Impact Capital". Social Impact Capital.
  24. ^ "Jason Pontin". Wired.
  25. ^ "This Biotech Company Raised $40 Million To Develop Treatments For 'Undruggable' Diseases". Forbes. 9 December 2021.
  26. ^ "VC Daily: Biotech Startups Take Aim at Fibrotic Disease Treatments". 18 March 2021 – via www.wsj.com.
  27. ^ Primack, Dan. "It's Personnel". Axios Pro Rata. Axios.
  28. ^ Azhar, Azeem. "🎉 Politics in the anthropocene; NFTs; Uber's retreat; The next pandemic & Oumuama ++ #314". www.exponentialview.co.
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