Jinal Jhaveri
Jinal Jhaveri (born 1978) is an American entrepreneur and investor known for founding companies such as SchoolMint[1], Enable us[2], and Mismo.
Early life and education
Jhaveri was born in Ahmedabad, India. He attended St. Xavier's High School in Ahmedabad. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology from Sardar Patel University in 2000. In 2001, he moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies at the University of Southern California (USC), where he earned a Master of Science in Computer Science in 2002, followed by a second Master of Science in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics in 2004.[3][4]
Research and Publications
Jinal Jhaveri has contributed to academic research in both genetics and computer vision. He was a co-author on influential work in plant genetics and also contributed to early developments in visual attention modeling.
Work with Magnus Nordborg
During his time at USC, Jhaveri collaborated with population geneticist Dr Nordborg on genomic studies of Arabidopsis thaliana. One of their most cited papers, "The Pattern of Polymorphism in Arabidopsis thaliana", was published in PLoS Biology in 2005[5]. The study provided one of the earliest genome-wide assessments of genetic variation in the species and has become a foundational reference in the field of plant population genetics.1
Research at USC iLab with Laurent Itti
While at the University of Southern California, Jhaveri worked in the iLab led by Dr. Laurent Itti, a pioneer in computational models of visual attention. His work there contributed to research in saliency-based vision systems and neuromorphic computing[6]. Although not all contributions were published under his name, Jhaveri was involved in the development of tools and frameworks that informed subsequent work in AI-driven perception systems and visual modeling.
Research with Joao Setubal at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute
At Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Jhaveri also co-authored work with Brazilian bioinformatician João Carlos Setubal on microbial genome annotation pipelines. A notable publication, “A comparison of functional annotation pipelines for microbial genomes[7]”, assessed different methods for predicting gene function and annotation accuracy in microbial genomes.
Career
Jhaveri began his career as a computer scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2003–2006). He then joined The Climate Corporation as a senior software engineer (2006–2008), and later held roles at MySpace (2008–2011) and LOLApps (2009–2010).
In 2010, he co-founded Mismo, a software platform and recruiting business helping North American companies hire engineering and design talent in Latin America.[8]
In 2013, he co-founded SchoolMint, an enrollment management platform for K–12 schools.[9][10][11]
SchoolMint was acquired by BV Investment Partners in 2017.[12][13]
In 2020, Jhaveri co-founded Enable.us, a digital sales platform that was acquired by MindTickle in April 2023.[14][15][16]
Fundraising and Political Contributions
During the Oakland mayoral special election in April 2025, former City Council member Loren Taylor received strong financial backing from individual donors. Among these, Jinal Jhaveri and his wife Forum Desai contributed $5,000 to the Empower Oakland Committee and $650 supporting Taylor for the Mayorial election, placing them among the campaign’s notable individual contributors[17][18]
Angel Investments
Jhaveri is an active angel investor[19] with a portfolio of over 100 startups, primarily in edtech, SaaS, and fintech. Notable investments include Fathom[20], CaptivateIQ, SmartPass[21] and others.
References
- ↑ Shieber, Jonathan (2016-02-10). "Schoolmint Raises $5.6 Million For Its Online Student Enrollment Platform". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ Sarkar, Gargi (2023-05-04). "SaaS Unicorn Mindtickle Acquires US-Based Enable Us To Empower Salespersons". Inc42 Media. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ LinkedIn Profile
- ↑ Dollar Gujarati: #15 Y-Combinator's Jinal and Forum Jhaveri
- ↑ Nordborg, Magnus; Hu, Tina T.; Ishino, Yoko; Jhaveri, Jinal; Toomajian, Christopher; Zheng, Honggang; Bakker, Erica; Calabrese, Peter; Gladstone, Jean; Goyal, Rana; Jakobsson, Mattias; Kim, Sung; Morozov, Yuri; Padhukasahasram, Badri; Plagnol, Vincent (2005-05-24). "The Pattern of Polymorphism in Arabidopsis thaliana". PLOS Biology. 3 (7): e196. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030196. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 1135296. PMID 15907155.
- ↑ "iLab Neuromorphic Vision C++ Toolkit (iNVT)". ilab.usc.edu. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ "UQ eSpace". espace.library.uq.edu.au. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ About Jinal Jhaveri
- ↑ Clever Podcast Interview with Jinal Jhaveri
- ↑ Commentary in USA Today
- ↑ Hechinger Opinion Article
- ↑ Acquisition Announcement - Edweek
- ↑ Companies Are Bought, Not Sold - EdSurge
- ↑ Enable.us Raises $4.5M - Tech Funding News
- ↑ FinSMEs Funding Report
- ↑ MindTickle Acquisition Press Release
- ↑ "Loren Taylor for Oakland Mayor 2025". Open Disclosure Oakland. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ andrewrgross (2024-10-31). "Wondering who pays for Empower Oakland? Apparently you can look it up and it's exactly what you expect". r/oakland. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ "Jinal Jhaveri - Recent News and Activity". Crunchbase. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ FinSMEs (2022-01-24). "Fathom Raises $4.7M in Seed Funding". FinSMEs. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
- ↑ Caffrey, Michelle (2024-12-12). "K-12 Dealmaking: Raptor Acquires SmartPass; zSpace Raises $10.8M in IPO". Marketbrief. Retrieved 2025-07-20.
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