Small by design.

Jesse Forrest has spent twenty years building software and the teams that ship it.

He is the co-founder and CTO of Upwards (formerly WeeCare), the Los Angeles–based care platform that has raised more than $60 million and matches families with child care while helping employers and government agencies make care accessible. Before Upwards, he was Director of Engineering at Tradesy, the fashion resale marketplace, where he rebuilt the engineering organization through a period of rapid growth.

Earlier, he led engineering at American Express's Enterprise Growth group and at Sometrics, the in-game payments platform acquired by American Express; built clinical software at Zynx Health; and began his career as a software engineer at Northrop Grumman, where he held a Top Secret clearance. Along the way he co-founded two companies of his own — Joimo, which was acquired, and FindSportsNow.

Through Yesteryear Ventures, Jesse invests his own capital in early-stage companies and works closely with their founders on the technical and organizational problems he has spent his career solving. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Florida State University and an MBA from the Florida Institute of Technology, and lives in San Diego with his family.