Sureel Sheth is a mergers, acquisitions, and major investor advisor for technology companies. He is a general partner with JMI Equity, a venture capital and business advising firm with offices in the Washington, D.C. area and California. He also sits on the board of directors of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a controversial election administration group with significant funding from major left-of-center grantmaking organizations. ^{1 2}

Education and Career­

Sureel Sheth received a bachelor of arts degree in economics and human biology from Stanford University in 2008 and a master’s of business administration from Harvard University in 2015. ³

Shortly after graduating from Stanford, Sheth joined McKinsey Consulting and spent nearly two years providing consulting services to the pharmaceutical, health care, and other industries. ⁴

Sheth left McKinsey in June 2010 and joined JMI Equity several month later. He briefly stepped away from JMI in summer 2014, taking an operations and development position with DoubleDutch, a San Francisco-based firm that specialized in technology for conferences and trade shows. The following year, he returned to JMI as its vice president and continued to work mainly with communications, pharmaceutical, and health care tech firms. In August 2018, he was promoted to principal, and in January 2022, JMI announced that Sheth would be the firm’s next general partner, with vice president Stephen Jones replacing him as principal. ^{5 6}

JMI Equity’s investments are often in the tens of millions of dollars, such as its $50 million investment in SafetyChain’s software platform. ⁷ The company has raised $4 billion from investors since its founding in 1992. ⁸

In addition to his work at JMI Equity, Sheth has privately invested in at least a dozen different firms, most of them in the digital communications and healthcare fields. ⁹

Center for Tech and Civic Life

In November 2015—just three months after becoming the vice president of JMI Equity—Sheth joined the board of directors of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, an activist group that pushes for election policy changes that are thought to favor left-of-center candidates and constituencies. The co-founders of the CTCL previously had worked at the New Organizing Institute, a now-defunct training center for Democratic Party and other left-wing activists with a particular focus on digital campaigning. CTCL also received significant funding from prominent Democratic funder Pierre Omidyar through his Democracy Fund, as well as tech executive Mark Zuckerberg, who provided advisory services to Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg in 2020 through his Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. CTCL attracted criticism from right-of-center observers, and even some left-leaning sources, for offering large grants to municipal election authorities during the 2020 election cycle. Sheth is the organization’s treasurer. ¹⁰

1. “Sureel Sheth.” JMI Equity. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.jmi.com/team/sureel-sheth/
2. “Board of Directors.” Center for Tech and Civic Life. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.techandciviclife.org/board-of-directors/
3. “Sureel Sheth.” LinkedIn. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureelsheth
4. “Sureel Sheth.” LinkedIn. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureelsheth
5. “Sureel Sheth.” LinkedIn. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureelsheth
6. “JMI Equity Promotes Sureel Sheth to General Partner and Stephen Jones to Principal.” CityBiz. January 4, 2022. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.citybiz.co/article/196323/jmi-equity-promotes-sureel-sheth-to-general-partner-and-stephen-jones-to-principal/
7. “SafetyChain software receives $50 million strategic growth investment from JMI Equity.” BusinessWire. October 20, 2021. Accessed January 16, 2023. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211020005368/en/SafetyChain-Software-Receives-50-Million-Strategic-Growth-Investment-from-JMI-Equity
8. ^[1] “JMI Equity grows software companies with capital and expertise.” The Software Report. January 19, 2021. Accessed January 16, 2023.  https://www.thesoftwarereport.com/jmi-equity-grows-software-companies-with-capital-and-expertise/
9. “Sureel Sheth.” LinkedIn. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureelsheth
10. “Sureel Sheth.” LinkedIn. Accessed January 15, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureelsheth