Philly Builds AI Founder Series: On Building, Exiting, and Building Again from 3x Founder Jake Stein of Common Paper
Philly Builds AI Founder Series: On Building, Exiting, and Building Again from 3x Founder Jake Stein of Common Paper
Jake Stein has co-founded three companies in Philadelphia, and each one started in a different way. RJMetrics was a business intelligence startup he launched a few years out of Wharton. Stitch was spun out of RJMetrics in 2016, when the analytics business was sold to Magento and a data pipeline product built inside the company became its own venture. Two years later, Talend acquired Stitch. Common Paper, which Jake started in 2021, takes on a different problem: how companies negotiate and sign contracts.
In this fireside conversation, Jake will walk through how he approached each company, including what he carried forward, what he changed, and what he'd do differently the next time. He'll explain what spinning a company out of an existing one involves: deciding which team, product, and investors go with the new company, and building a separate business while the parent is being sold.
Our last guests, Kaitlyn Knopp and Warren Lebovics, built Pequity on years of expertise in compensation. Jake took a different route. He'll talk about how he landed on contracts, a market outside the data and analytics work of his first two companies, and how he found and tested the problem before committing to it. He'll also get into one of the hardest calls a founder makes: how to tell when a product isn't working and it's time to pivot, drawing on Common Paper's early shift away from the enterprise and toward startups.
About the speaker:
Jake Stein is co-founder and CEO of Common Paper, which makes contracts faster and easier for sales and legal teams. He previously co-founded Stitch and led it as CEO through its acquisition by Talend, where he stayed on as SVP of Stitch and later SVP of Growth. Before Stitch, he co-founded RJMetrics and served as COO until its acquisition by Magento Commerce. Jake began his career as an analyst at Insight Venture Partners, holds a BS in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the Wharton School, and is an EY Entrepreneur of the Year honoree.
The Philly Builds AI Founders series is created for startup founders in the Greater Philadelphia region. Registration application is strictly for product founders of venture back-able startups and will require approval.
5-5:30 Check in, networking, light bites and drinks
5:30-6:30 Host kick off, main presentation, q&a
6:30-7 Continued networking and wrap up
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