J.R. Moran

Chief Operating Officer at New Stack Ventures

📍 Greater Chicago Area, United States🔄 Updated September 2026💼 26 investments📅 11 years investing🗓 Last invested Jan 2021
VC🌍 United States20+ investments
26
Total investments
16
Early stage
9
Mid stage
0
Late stage
11y
Years active

Portfolio

26 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Lead Investor
Jan 2021
XILO is the #1 quoting software for independent insurance agencies trying to convert the next generation of Insurance shoppers. Our platform takes the same technology that these digital agencies and writers spent $7B to advertise and puts it in the hands of the independent agency. Don’t let a shopper pass your independent agency for another digital agency or writer, schedule a demo now to see how XILO can help you convert more insurance shoppers!
Lead Investor
Nov 2020
Phood uses computer vision and powerful data processing to automate food waste tracking for retail grocers and prepared food operations. Thanks to an innovative blend of hardware and software, Phood users see higher margins, smarter production schedules, and impact that goes far beyond the bottom line. Food waste is our most actionable solution to climate change, and Phood was designed at the intersection of smart business and sustainability to be an easy choice. To learn more, visit us at phoodsolutions.com.
Lead Investor
Oct 2020
Shotcall is a platform and marketplace for fans to play games with their favorite people. Creators can engage with their community in a way that gives fans a chance to get off the sidelines and get in the game, while creating new revenue generating opportunities and more high-quality, shareable content. Shotcall provides a convenient way to organize deeply engaging community events, giving the streamer end to end control over session length, lobby size, and price. For business inquiries please email us at admin@shotcall.gg. For PR inquiries email us at shotcall@astrskpr.com.
early stageEntertainment
Lead Investor
Oct 2020
As a managed marketplace, we leverage technology and 3rd parties to streamline service - the sweet spot between dated traditions and a modern approach. Currently, we connect vacation rental hosts with cleaners but inevitably we’ll disrupt the service industry by creating the world’s largest cleaning company. We’re never satisfied until it’s good as neu. 
Lead Investor
Sep 2020
Retail Aware helps brands, retailers, and their partners measure in-store product displays and shopper behavior data in real time. We help you know what shoppers want like never before to increase your ROI.
early stageRetail
Investor
Mar 2020
​From Greystar to AIMCO to ZRS, ​​Flamingo's All-In-One Platform is used by 400,000+ units to centralize resident engagement & consolidate tools​.​ For residents, Flamingo's Resident Engagement App means one app for everything they need - rent, maintenance, event RSVPs, rewards, access control, amenities, eBulletin, on-demand fitness, etc. ​ For staff, Flamingo means one platform to book events, survey residents, automate move-ins, monitor reputation, request reviews, communicate with residents, verify renter's insurance, etc. Flamingo also integrates with dozens of tools including Yardi, RealPage, & Entrata. ​
Investor
Feb 2020
Gather Voices helps organizations access and share the authentic stories of stakeholders to create more impact. OUR MISSION We enable organizations to collect and share user-generated video from stakeholders by tapping into the powerful cameras that everyone has in their phones, tablets and laptops. Our technology coaches end users to make better video, and we build tools to enable organizations to quickly realize value from this content. User-generated video for organizations was always great in theory but nearly impossible in practice. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone. OUR VISION The best marketing comes from happy customers talking about their experiences. The best training comes from those that already do the job sharing their methods. The best fundraising comes from donors sharing how they made a difference. The best member engagement comes from sharing the voices of engaged members. We’re working toward a world when raising these authentic voices will be easy and becomes the obvious best practice and first place to start for digital engagement practitioners.
Investor
Jun 2019
Curv Health is a free platform that empowers allied healthcare providers to build and operate their own digital practices.
Investor
Apr 2019
Welcome to @hotel, the first-ever OTA for Instagram that’s redefining the way we experience travel. With a staggering 45 million followers, we’re harnessing the power of social commerce to deliver the most incredible hotel deals in all the popular destinations worldwide. We’re more than just a booking site—we’re on a mission to transform the way we see the world. Travel sparks curiosity, fosters compassion, and creates real human connections that transcend borders. It’s a transformative experience that leaves a lasting impact on our souls. Our mission is to make the world a more curious place by reigniting our collective curiosity and encouraging human connections that change the way we live. At @hotel, we believe in Radical Hospitality, where every guest is treated like family. The hospitality industry has normalized mediocrity, but we’re here to shake things up. Our Guest Services team goes above and beyond to create a comprehensive customer support experience that’s unmatched in the industry. We don’t just meet expectations; we exceed them in ways that make our guests feel loved and appreciated. Our passion for supporting travelers on our platform is our love letter to the modern traveler. We want to inspire you to dream bigger and experience more because, at the end of the day, it’s not just about the destination—it’s about the journey.
mid stageHospitality
Investor
Mar 2019
Originating from MIT and backed by a rich heritage of farming, Adaviv is innovating a new wave of tools for growers and delivers robust ROI for Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). Focused on creating a world where every farm is a beacon of efficiency and profitability, our patented technologies tackle the industry's primary challenges: farm labor and crop losses. Our crop-agnostic platform has attracted the world's top greenhouse and indoor producers of flowers, tomatoes, cannabis, produce, and more. Our clients can unlock our advanced, AI-driven solutions that digitize crop scouting, detect early issues via computer vision, and optimize farm productivity, delivering returns exceeding 300%. Headquartered in Greentown Labs, Somerville, MA— the globe's largest clean-tech accelerator— Adaviv is proud to be recognized internationally by stalwarts like the United Nations and Microsoft’s AI for Earth. As we venture into the next chapter of our journey, we're eager to welcome passionate, growth-minded individuals to share in our vision.
Investor
Jan 2019
Pliant believes moving at the speed of digital business requires a fundamental change in how IT organizations deploy and manage technology. A rapidly changing and complex infrastructure demands a platform that provides initial automation of provisioning and reduction of human error as well as ensures compliance and automate real-time mitigation of issues. Pliant’s unified platform for infrastructure automation simplifies how ITOps, DevOps and SecOps teams can quickly develop and deploy workflow automation in response to the demands of complex IT processes. By transforming API code into low-code building blocks, Pliant is able to Automate, Secure and Transform all of the business’ digital processes.
Investor
Nov 2018
Valt is freeing internet users from the tedium of password management and the threat of digital identify theft with a new approach to password management. Valt users lock their passwords behind an automatically generated random master password that is translated into a series of images, which are easier to remember than text. Users can access their Valt across all their devices, allowing them to manage, generate and instantly retrieve any of their passwords, never wasting another moment being locked out of a site.
Investor
Oct 2018
Aspinity is revolutionizing the design of battery-operated, always-on sensing devices. The company's unique analog machine learning processor introduces a completely new, bio-inspired approach to always-on sensing that improves battery life by 10x by eliminating the power-wasting processing of irrelevant data. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Aspinity delivers the power- and data-efficient solution required for the next generation of portable always-on devices for IoT, smart home, consumer, industrial, and medical applications such as voice/sound wake-up, industrial machine health monitoring, and wearable health monitoring.
Investor
Aug 2018
Groundhog is a suite of tools to power the crypto subscription economy. Groundhog consists of both a mobile wallet, and a payment gateway, Groundhog Pay, that can be installed on any web site via API or plugin. Customer and merchant funds are stored in state-of-the-art, non-custodial, multisignature smart wallets on Ethereum. Pre-authorized, recurring payments aren’t possible with today’s crypto wallets and payment gateways — Groundhog is building the technology to enable this huge category of payments for the new world of decentralized finance.
Investor
Jul 2018
Winston is the first convenient privacy product for everyone — a hardware device that provides complete protection from hackers, corporate spies and warrantless government surveillance. We’ve packaged our proprietary anti-tracking technology into a simple plug-and-play solution that anyone can use. Connect Winston between your cable modem and wifi router and it protects your entire home network — before tracking reaches your PCs, cell phones and other connected devices.
Show all 26 investments ↓
Experience · 28 entries
All (28)
Investments (26)
2021
Lead Investor
Jan 2021
XILO is the #1 quoting software for independent insurance agencies trying to convert the next generation of Insurance shoppers. Our platform takes the same technology that these digital agencies and writers spent $7B to advertise and puts it in the hands of the independent agency. Don’t let a shopper pass your independent agency for another digital agency or writer, schedule a demo now to see how XILO can help you convert more insurance shoppers!
2020
Lead Investor
Nov 2020
Phood uses computer vision and powerful data processing to automate food waste tracking for retail grocers and prepared food operations. Thanks to an innovative blend of hardware and software, Phood users see higher margins, smarter production schedules, and impact that goes far beyond the bottom line. Food waste is our most actionable solution to climate change, and Phood was designed at the intersection of smart business and sustainability to be an easy choice. To learn more, visit us at phoodsolutions.com.
Lead Investor
Oct 2020
Shotcall is a platform and marketplace for fans to play games with their favorite people. Creators can engage with their community in a way that gives fans a chance to get off the sidelines and get in the game, while creating new revenue generating opportunities and more high-quality, shareable content. Shotcall provides a convenient way to organize deeply engaging community events, giving the streamer end to end control over session length, lobby size, and price. For business inquiries please email us at admin@shotcall.gg. For PR inquiries email us at shotcall@astrskpr.com.
early stageEntertainment
Lead Investor
Oct 2020
As a managed marketplace, we leverage technology and 3rd parties to streamline service - the sweet spot between dated traditions and a modern approach. Currently, we connect vacation rental hosts with cleaners but inevitably we’ll disrupt the service industry by creating the world’s largest cleaning company. We’re never satisfied until it’s good as neu. 
Lead Investor
Sep 2020
Retail Aware helps brands, retailers, and their partners measure in-store product displays and shopper behavior data in real time. We help you know what shoppers want like never before to increase your ROI.
early stageRetail
Show all 28 entries ↓
Investment activity
2015–2021 · 26 investments
20152201642017320186201942020620211
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