Jesse Leimgruber

He has a brother, P.J. Leimgruber. VentureBeat’s article of August 2014 states that the brothers’ parents did not attend college.⁠[1]

A piece by David Ongchoco on HuffPost’s contributor platform relates that he started his first business at 15, in FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, with his brother, doing website design and development; he first built an e-commerce site for a client and then opened one of his own, selling laser pointers, LED products and neon hats, which were popular in the music-festival scene. The piece quotes him: “I built this e-commerce site for somebody and it kind of did well so I got jealous.”⁠[2]

The two brothers co-founded Rank Executives, a digital marketing firm, and RageHats, a retailer of neon hats. His Startupfest speaker biography says that he began developing websites as a freelancer at 15, that at 16 he bootstrapped his e-commerce site RageHats to more than $50,000 a month in revenue, and that he then used the profits of RageHats to launch the digital marketing agency Rank Executives.⁠[1][3]

The HuffPost contributor piece says that the agency served clients including Nissan, Phillips (as the piece spells it) and Polaroid with search engine optimization, pay-per-click, email marketing and other services, and that working with bloggers took a great deal of time, which gave rise to NeoReach. P.J. Leimgruber said in a question-and-answer piece of September 2014 that the influencer marketing service of Rank Executives was popular but time-consuming and could not scale.⁠[2][4]

The HuffPost contributor piece says that he got into Stanford University; his Startupfest speaker biography says that he attended the university.⁠[2][3]

The Stanford Daily wrote in November 2014 that about a year earlier he and Misha Talavera had pitched NeoReach to classmates, professors and venture capitalists in Stanford’s ENGR145 class, Technology Entrepreneurship, describing it as a technology-enabled advertising marketplace; it was the two students’ final project for the class. The review published by Influencer Marketing Hub says that he was still a teenager at the time and was then accepted into Stanford’s accelerator program to work on the idea.⁠[5][6]

Misha Talavera had been part of the campus organization Stanford Marketing; after he met Jesse Leimgruber, who ran a digital marketing agency with his brother P.J. Leimgruber, the three set out to build the platform, with Jesse Leimgruber as chief executive officer, Misha Talavera as chief marketing officer and P.J. Leimgruber as chief operating officer. Jesse Leimgruber called it the “Google Adwords for influencer marketing.”⁠[5][4]

There are two accounts of when the company began. P.J. Leimgruber said in September 2014 that NeoReach was co-founded in 2013 by him, Jesse Leimgruber and the Stanford undergraduate Misha Talavera, that the founding team was complete in October 2013 and also included Brian Sorel, who came from Rank Executives, and the lead engineer Milos Bejda; developers moved from Rank Executives to NeoReach full-time, the company funded itself for its first couple of months, built the first version of the platform and closed its first deals, and it joined The Alchemist Accelerator in October 2013. Jesse Leimgruber said in an interview of December 2018 that NeoReach launched in early 2014.⁠[4][7]

The HuffPost contributor piece relates that one of his professors at Stanford, whom it calls Ravi, suggested that he build the tools as software and not as an agency, wrote the first check and invited him into his accelerator. The piece quotes him: “I should probably do it as a software and not as an agency,” and “Alchemist help us learn enterprise sales.”⁠[2]

In January 2014 NeoReach raised an angel round of $300,000; the HuffPost contributor piece says that this first financing came while he was still in school.⁠[1][2]

On August 27, 2014, VentureBeat published as an exclusive the news that NeoReach had raised a $1.5 million seed round, describing the company as headed by a 19-year-old Stanford student. The round had closed the previous month and was led by Founder.org, the fund of the Splunk founder Michael Baum, which concentrates on student-led startups; other investors included the Expedia founder Greg Slyngstad and the former HP chief operating officer Bill Veghte. The Stanford Daily, for its part, wrote that NeoReach raised the $1.5 million on August 27, 2014, when he was 19 and still an undergraduate at Stanford.⁠[1][5]

FinSMEs’ item on the round places NeoReach in Palo Alto, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, and says that it is led by the chief executive officer Jesse Leimgruber with P.J. Leimgruber and Misha Talavera; the investors it lists are Matt Mochary, Ashmeet Sidana, Greg Slyngstad, Bill Veghte, Laurent Asscher, George Arabian, Pradeep Singh and Munir Ali. The item says that NeoReach graduated from The Alchemist Accelerator, an enterprise-focused accelerator run by the Stanford professor Ravi Belani, and that the company intended to use the funds to scale operations and grow the development team, with plans that also included an iPhone app, an influencer-in-residence program, expanded data analytics and a larger base of influencers.⁠[8]

VentureBeat wrote that NeoReach then had 14 employees, was coming out of a trial period and was formally launching that week. Bloggers and other influencers chose a product on the platform, received a link and earned a fee for each click, at a rate set by the advertiser; he said that while the company was building its user base the whole click fee went to the promoter, and that NeoReach’s eventual cut might be 25 percent.⁠[1]

The company said that more than 10,000 users had used the platform and that it had delivered over half a million clicks; the users included about 4,200 bloggers, 800 celebrities and influencers, and about 5,600 local influencers and everyday people. The users named by VentureBeat were the technology bloggers Chris Pirillo and Techno Buffalo, the professional surfer Anastasia Ashley, the former American Idol contestant Kayden Stephenson, and the Vine personalities Weekly Chris, Joey Salads and Claudia Romani. The article listed TapInfluence, Izea, Niche.co and GrapeStory as competitors.⁠[1]

VentureBeat quotes him: “We are looking to be the AdWords of influencer marketing.” The article notes that influencers were not required, by law or by NeoReach, to disclose paid promotion; he said that they were “not required to be positive.”⁠[1]

In the same article he said that he was “most definitely dropping out” of Stanford the following quarter, that his parents were “not thrilled” and felt he was “throwing it away,” and that Stanford “has a great policy of always letting you back.”⁠[1]

The HuffPost contributor piece says that he dropped out of Stanford “last year,” after NeoReach closed a seed round of more than $1 million, and quotes him: “some things just can’t wait and Neoreach was getting enough traction.” The Influencer Marketing Hub review says that by 2014 NeoReach had received more than $1.5 million in seed funding and that the founder had put his studies on hold.⁠[2][6]

On September 5, 2014, NeoReach issued a press release on its “Influencer in Residence” program, in which he was quoted as chief executive officer. The program was led by the growth strategist Shannon Wu; those admitted received all of the profits of their promotions and became members of the NeoReach team, able to arrange brand deals, give input on the direction of the company and manage a budget, and there was no formal application process. The release described NeoReach as founded by a team from Stanford University and gave its platform more than 10,000 users.⁠[9]

The question-and-answer piece published on September 24, 2014, placed NeoReach in Stanford, California, with a team of 15; in November 2014 The Stanford Daily wrote that the company was based in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Orlando, Florida, and was scaling its development team and starting an “influencer development program.”⁠[4][5]

The HuffPost contributor piece says that at 19 he closed a large deal in “Zappos and Amazon’s office” and that Zappos was NeoReach’s first big client; it says that this deal, like the other early ones, was won by customer development and not by selling: he asked prospects about their pain points and what an ideal solution would look like, scheduled follow-up calls for feedback, and presented the demo with that feedback built in once it was ready. The piece adds that about two years later the clients also included WalmartWalmartWalmart is an American retailer founded by Sam Walton in 1962, with businesses spanning physical retail, membership warehouse clubs, e-commerce and related services. Its businesses include Walmart and Sam’s Club, and it has expanded into other markets through international investments; its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WMT.Open the full entry, MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, Amazon and NBCNBCNBC (National Broadcasting Company) is an American national commercial broadcast television network. It was founded by RCA in 1926, began as a radio network and later developed television. With ABC and CBS it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it passed to General Electric with RCA in 1986, merged with Universal to form NBCUniversal in 2004, has been controlled by Comcast since 2011, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry. In his 2018 interview he said that the company’s first real customer was Zappos, which was also its first recognizable brand, and that it began with a one-year license for $5,000.⁠[2][7]

In the same interview he said that the product launched in a beta in 2015 and took its later form toward the end of 2015. The Influencer Marketing Hub review says that NeoReach no longer charged per click or handled payments and had built an algorithm that mines the social web, with more than 3 million influencers in its database; the review states: “Fast forward two and a half years, and NeoReach is a profitable company with a roster of Fortune 500 clients.”⁠[7][6]

He was 21 when the HuffPost contributor piece was written. In it he advised against hurrying into startups: “I would really emphasize to tell people not to rush into startups.” “It’s 5 years at least. When you start a startup, you don’t have the option to leave.” “If you don’t love what you're working on, you will have a bumpy ride.”⁠[2]

On June 21, 2016, the Thiel Foundation announced the 2016 class of the Thiel Fellowship. He was on the list, with marketing technology as his field, as the founder of NeoReach, and with San Francisco as his location.⁠[10]

The HuffPost contributor piece already states that he had been accepted to several programs and accelerators, among them The Alchemist Accelerator and the Thiel Fellowship, and quotes him: “The Thiel Fellowship was good in helping meet people who have already dropped out as well.” In his interview of December 2018 he said that he loved the fellowship, that “Peter” was not very closely involved, and that the fellowship was really about its community of other entrepreneurs.⁠[2][7]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the federal securities regulator of the United States. Created during the Great Depression by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and led by five commissioners, it has a three-part mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation.Open the full entry’s order of 2022 states that Bloom was founded in August 2017 by three students and one other individual, all living in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry. The introductory post signed by the Bloom team lists the four as Jesse Leimgruber, Alain Meier, John Backus and Ryan Faber.⁠[11][12]

The post describes Bloom as an end-to-end protocol for identity verification, risk assessment and credit scoring, built on EthereumEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry and IPFS, and states that “Bloom is not a lender, but a platform”; its aim was to help lenders of every kind, from mortgage providers to local credit unions, move onto the blockchain.⁠[12]

Bloom was posted on Product HuntProduct HuntProduct Hunt is a product-discovery and launch community founded by Ryan Hoover in 2013 and operated by Product Hunt, Inc. Makers present new products, while users vote, comment and review them and discover tools through categories, forums and AI search. AngelList announced its acquisition in 2016; as of November 2026, its official website lists Rajiv Ayyangar as CEO.Open the full entry in September 2017, with John Backus, Jesse Leimgruber and Alain Meier listed as its makers.⁠[13][14]

In Bloom’s weekly update of October 18, 2017, he wrote that the team had spent the weekend at ETH Waterloo, where he met at least a dozen members of the Bloom community; the update carries a photograph of him with Joey Krug (Augur) and Panashe Mahachi at ETH Waterloo. That week he and his teammate Daniel were in New York, planning about 10 meetings a day, and Ameer Rosic of BlockGeeks interviewed him for 20 minutes; the team planned to attend Money 20/20 in Las Vegas from October 22 to 25, and he planned to be in London from November 8 to 10. His author biography on Medium reads “Stanford. Blockchain. Startups. Roller Coasters.”⁠[15]

On October 30, 2017, he published under his own name the announcement of the Bloom token sale: the public sale was to open on November 30 at 4 p.m. GMT with a hard cap of $50 million; the token was the Bloom token, ticker BLT, with a total supply of 150 million, of which 75 million (50 percent) were for the sale, 60 million (40 percent) went into a multi-signature wallet held by the Bloom company and 15 million (10 percent) were set aside for the community. The announcement named the founding team as Jesse Leimgruber, Alain Meier, John Backus, Ryan Faber and Daniel Maren, and the advisors as Meg Nakumura, Joseph Urgo, David Raphael, Devon Zuegel and Shannon Wu.⁠[16]

On November 1, 2017, he published a further post on how the funds would be used: growing the network, acquiring users and creating community incentive programs for different groups; building the lending ecosystem (underwriting talent, data, tools and processing power); showing long-term financial stability to banks, credit unions and other institutions; exploring vertical-specific joint ventures with established lenders; and business development, user acquisition and legal and compliance work in each new market entered. The post says that the team had managed more than $100 million in funds.⁠[17]

The order of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission finds that Bloom’s token offering ran from November 14, 2017, to January 2, 2018, and raised $30,912,842 from 7,358 investors worldwide: in the presale 29 individuals bought more than 16 million tokens at a discount of 15 or 25 percent for $9,905,439, and in the public sale that began on November 30, 2017, 7,329 investors bought almost 29 million tokens for 39,053 ETH (about $21 million). Bloom had aimed to sell 75 million tokens and sold 45.5 million.⁠[11]

In an interview with Nathan Latka published on December 9, 2018, he said that he was 24, lived in San Francisco with his girlfriend of four years and had no children; asked what he wished his 20-year-old self had known, he said that he would probably have taken a few more years to learn and to reflect on what he really wanted to do before jumping in.⁠[7]

He said that NeoReach then had just over 30 employees in all, with an engineering office in Orlando, a sales and marketing office in Austin, and the executives and many other employees in the San Francisco Bay Area; the company had raised $4 million across about two rounds. He said that the company would look to raise again but was profitable, and that the team was constantly weighing more profitability against more scale and whether to put all of its cash back into the business.⁠[7]

The operating figures he gave were: about 102 customers; a minimum license fee for a brand of about $25,000 a year and an average of about $200,000 a year per customer, with more than a handful of brands spending over $1 million a year; a growth rate at the time of between two and three times a year, and, in his words, “millions in revenue.” Asked by the host about gross revenue churn per year, he answered that close to 20 percent of customers churned while the company grew at a significantly higher rate, and added that the December 2017 cohort had lost about 20 percent of its revenue over the year; those that churned tended to be the $25,000-a-year customers, who were not deeply integrated with the product and usually left not because of a product problem but because a campaign stopped. The host worked out from this a net revenue retention of about 120 percent, and he replied: “Yeah, that’s right.” He said that the company received more than 1,000 inbound leads a month and spent about 40 percent of a customer’s first-year value on acquisition; in the early days they had contacted about 200 to 300 chief marketing officers, not to pitch but to ask for feedback on what they were building, mostly through LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry and with some email.⁠[7]

On the following year, he said while discussing a further raise that the company was projecting more than $20 million; later, answering the host’s question about its target for bookings growth, he said that it would more than double the next year and was projecting about $25 million.⁠[7]

On August 9, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease-and-desist order against Bloom Protocol, LLC (Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-20952). The order finds that the Bloom tokens were investment contracts and therefore securities, and that Bloom offered and sold them without registration and without an exemption, in violation of Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act of 1933. Bloom consented to the entry of the order and, except as to jurisdiction, neither admitted nor denied the findings. The order names none of the founders.⁠[11][18]

The order records that Bloom Protocol, LLC is a DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry limited liability company with its principal place of business in Florida, wholly owned by Bloom, Ltd., a Gibraltar company, which in turn is wholly owned by Bloom Holdco, LLC, a Delaware company owned by the four founders.⁠[11]

Under the order Bloom had to pay a civil penalty of $300,000 within 14 days of the entry of the order, file a Form 10 within 270 days to register the tokens as securities, and notify those who bought tokens on or before January 2, 2018, of their potential claims and compensate them through a claims process; if it failed to meet these undertakings it faced a penalty of up to $30,912,842, less amounts already paid. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that it had taken into account Bloom’s remedial steps toward registration, including retaining an auditor, starting an audit and hiring staff for the work.⁠[11][18]

Ledger Insights wrote on August 10, 2022, that since its founding in 2017 Bloom had had relationships with TransUnion, BMW, Amex Middle East and the crypto lender BlockFi, that it had started out focusing on credit scoring and at that time offered self-sovereign identity solutions; the article puts the proceeds of the token offering, which ended in January 2018, at $31 million.⁠[19]

As of November 2026, the About page of NeoReach’s website says that the company started in 2013 and lists James Michalak as chief executive officer and Brian Sorel as chief operating officer; Jesse Leimgruber’s name does not appear on the page.⁠[20]

His Startupfest speaker biography calls him the chief executive officer and founder of NeoReach and says that he advises companies in FOUNDER.org and mentors and advises startups for The Alchemist Accelerator; it adds that he is a member of the Thiel Fellowship, that in his spare time he likes to make angel investments in startups, attend meetups and speak at conferences, and that he lives in San Francisco. Opening his interview of December 2018, Nathan Latka introduced him as a mentor to The Alchemist Accelerator, a Thiel Fellow and a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford and USCUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, planned by a group led by Judge Robert Maclay Widney and opened to students in 1880.Open the full entry.⁠[3][7]

He joined Product Hunt on July 1, 2014; besides Bloom, his profile lists Reddit List (January 2015), a tool he made that tracks the top 5,000 subreddits.⁠[13]

NeoReach: Official website: https://neoreach.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

X: Public account: https://x.com/jesserank (opens in a new window).⁠[3]