This page was last updated on August 5, 2025.*
Hey, I’m Jack 👋🏼
Taken during a Zoom call in August 2025.
A very brief TLDR about me:
Who is “Jack Raines?”
I’m a writer and investor. The order of these labels depends on who I’m talking to. Given that this is the welcome email on my blog, I’ll start with the first.
I’ve been blogging on Substack since 2021, and my blogs posts are a collection of thoughts on how I view the world. You could say this blog is a glimpse of “life according to Jack.” Topics include random mid-to-late-20s musings that have passed through my brain since I was 24, behavioral finance, my thoughts on the “current thing” in public and private markets, the importance of travel, and the impact of technology on our lives.
More than 65,000 people are now subscribed to my blog, and around in August 2025, I signed a book deal with Penguin Random House to write a book discussing how 20-somethings can make the most out of their youth before it’s gone.
Now, a bit about my day job. I’m an investor at Slow Ventures, an early-stage venture fund, and I split my time working on our generalist seed fund and our new Creator Fund. Given that my tenure in the VC business is largely tied to my ability to find sick people to invest in, I'm using my "about" page as a bat signal for just those people. I'm interested, broadly speaking, in meeting with three types of people:
1) Moderately unhinged founders who are hell-bent on building something big and cool and want to use our money to do it.
2) Moderately unhinged founders who are hell-bent on building something big that the rest of the world finds lame, but, for some reason, they are obsessed with, and wants to use our money to do it.
3) Influential creators who have realized that they'd rather use their platforms to build their own businesses instead of living on brand deals forever. (I used to run ads on my blog, not the highest leverage way to monetize an audience! That's why I'm a VC now).
If you’re a founder building something new, a creator with a strong audience and even stronger entrepreneurial chops, or you know someone who fits one of those bills, reply this email or shoot me a note at jack@slow.co.
Outside of that, I like hanging out with folks I meet on the internet. I live in San Francisco (for now), and I’m in NYC a lot.
What should you expect from this blog?
Every Monday, I send out a newsletter with a short column on a topic I’ve been thinking about, some highlights of different projects I’ve been working on, content I’ve enjoyed over the previous week, and anything else I’ve found interesting that I think you would too. Here’s a recent Monday newsletter example. A couple of times per month, I also publish longer, independent essays discussing topics I’ve been thinking through more deeply. Like the internal pressure that builds up as you stress over pivoting your career in your late 20s, or the risk of living an apathetic life in the modern world.
I’m not going to make any promises on what I’ll write about. Just know that I will write. A lot.
-Jack
Email: jack@youngmoney.co
Work email: jack@slow.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackraines/
