John Hughes

John is co-founder and general partner at Swift Ventures.
He has been a successful entrepreneur, inventor and product leader for two decades.
While completing his MBA in 2007, John built an early version of TubeMogul that helped win the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition.
Throughout the next decade -- from John's co-founding of TubeMogul to the company's rapid growth, IPO and acquisition by Adobe -- John's unique blend of leadership and high standards for creativity and execution enabled a blistering pace of innovation.
Under John's leadership as CTO and President of Products, TubeMogul's automation and AI-driven platform helped marketers root out non-transparent business practices, fraud and waste in the $500 billion global advertising industry.
Behind many of those industry-firsts was a highly cohesive team of hundreds of developers, designers and product leaders that John led and mentored.
In all, TubeMogul won over a dozen technology-related industry awards including from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), AdWeek, Digiday and TheDrum.
John is relied on by top venture capital firms and technology companies for advice on product development, roadmapping as well as technical due diligence and hiring.
He especially enjoys helping startups scale product development from garage to enterprise and creating initiatives to deepen company culture (his own hackathons remain lore among many former employees).
A constant tinkerer who built everything from the furniture in his home to a (now) app-enabled '80s-era Coke Machine, John is just as capable behind a table saw as he is a keyboard.
He holds five patents relating to analytics and automation in digital media and advertising.
John lives in Lafayette in a home he and his wife designed together.
They enjoy hitting the open road with their three children.
An avid woodworker and cyclist, John is happiest when he's creating, learning and exploring.