Jacob Mullins brings an unusual 360° background to venture capital, having worked across tech media at VentureBeat, led startup marketing at Microsoft's BizSpark program, invested at Shasta Ventures, and founded Exitround, an anonymous M&A marketplace for startups. He applies a philosophy called mushin no shin—over-preparing through deep market research so he can move quickly on instinct when the right opportunity appears—and recently founded VC Mastermind, a private network for venture capital managing partners running $50M-$5B funds. Jacob Mullins brings an unusual 360° background to venture capital, having worked across tech media at VentureBeat, led startup marketing at Microsoft's BizSpark program, invested at Shasta Ventures, and founded Exitround, an anonymous M&A marketplace for startups. He applies a philosophy called mushin no shin—over-preparing through deep market research so he can move quickly on instinct when the right opportunity appears—and recently founded VC Mastermind, a private network for venture capital managing partners running $50M-$5B funds.