The 81 Collection
Jacob Babcock is the CEO and Founder of NuCurrent Inc since April 2009, where leadership focuses on commercialization and R&D strategies for innovative electronics, resulting in over 300 patents. Jacob also serves as a Board Member at mHUB Chicago, an innovation center for product development, and as a Member of The 81 Collection, a Founders Fund supporting early-stage companies. Previously, Jacob was an Advisory Board Member for the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and provided legal counsel at cleverbridge, Inc. and worked as a Business Law Attorney at Foley & Lardner LLP. Early career experience includes teaching high school business and coaching football with Teach for America. Jacob holds a JD from Northwestern University and a BS from Indiana University Bloomington.
This person is not in the org chart
This person is not in any teams
The 81 Collection
We are the founders fund for un-sexy industries. We seek to back entrepreneurs transforming boring trades, hard work, unpleasant spaces, and structural inequity. Businesses in these industries still attract less seed funding at lower valuations because venture believes these industries are still low margin, capital intensive, difficult to scale, and full of red tape, respectively. However, this narrative will soon flip. Automation is transforming services into goods businesses, and mass-produced hardware can now create beautiful, individual experiences. Start-ups will transform low growth and low margin industries into high growth and high margin ones. As we look around, 19% of GDP attracts more than 50% of venture capital activity. 81% of the U.S. GDP is starved of innovation and it’s now possible to fully digitize these industries. Dream big, and we'll have your back.