Jim Opfer Founding General Partner

Mr. Opfer is Founding General Partner of LaunchPower Inc. Previously, he was Entrepreneur in Residence at Altos Ventures after selling his business news delivery service to AskJeeves. He has been helping and running startups for over 15 years also formerly serving as Venture Advisor to Accel Partners, Advisory Principal to Sterling Payot Investments in the telecommunications and wireless areas. Very active on the wireless speaking and writing circuit in the mid-1990s, Jim was known as one of the most connected persons in the world.
 
Jim retired from the Air Force as a Colonel in 1992 after 21 years building fixed and mobile telecommunications networks for the Department of Defense. His Air Force career was highlighted by serving in White House Presidential Communications for the Reagan Administration/National Security Council,  and chief architect for networks for the National Reconnaissance Office. Mr. Opfer was responsible for over 1,700 people worldwide and a $200 million/year budget where he was known in Silicon Valley as the "venture customer" who started many startups with early customer funding, to include Cisco, GRiD Systems, and NeXT Computing.
 
Mr. Opfer is a graduate of the University of Detroit in Electrical Engineering and holds an MBA from California State University.  He also was recently an advisory member of the University of Colorado Masters Program in Interdisciplinary Telecommunications.