James LaPlaine joined Brighton Park Capital as a Senior Advisor in July of 2021. He currently serves on the boards of RocketReach and Storyblok, two of Brighton Park Capital's portfolio companies, and is the host of the firm's podcast series, The BRIGHTON PARKast.
If you ask James LaPlaine how he got here, he’ll tell you that he’s always been curious, even at a young age. This curiosity led him to computing. After running a popular dial-up bulletin board system from his bedroom in high school, he naturally pursued a degree in Computer Science, which allowed him to be present at many historic moments of internet history: running the systems for NORAD Tracks Santa, The Grammy’s, and the Lord of the Rings movies; setting video streaming records during the first season of Big Brother; shuttering Netscape; dozens of acquisitions and secret diligences that never panned out; AOL buying Time Warner, unraveling, and eventually selling AOL to Verizon, and then buying Yahoo.
Most recently, James was the Chief Technology Officer for Red Ventures, a private digital marketing firm that owns a portfolio of digital assets including Bankrate, HealthLine, Lonely Planet, and CNET Media Group. He’ll happily describe the impact of their technology platforms and data science models, yet his greatest accomplishment at Red Ventures has been cultural, not technical: building a thriving community of technical teams that will long outlast his tenure. Fostering a collaborative, rather than competitive, atmosphere, he proudly oversaw the benefits of an inclusive workforce, and nourished curiosity in pursuit of great solutions.
