Ressi’s previous startups, including Methodfive, Game Trust, and Total New York, resulted in nearly $2 billion in exits by the age of 30.

[4] Ressi attended college at the University of Pennsylvania where he spent time as a housemate of PayPal co-founder, Elon Musk.

[8] He spent four years in college but did not receive his degree, because he wanted to use copies of Green Times as his senior thesis instead of writing a traditional paper.

[5] In 1997, America Online purchased Total New York for an undisclosed amount of money[4] and redubbed it AOL Digital City.

[4] Game Trust had a successful first round of funding in 2003, securing investments from Silicon Valley Venture Partners and Intel Capital.

After a failed development project at Game Trust in 2006, Elon Musk was voted off the board of directors and replaced with the son of TWJ Capital founder Thomas Jones.

[4] In 2009, Ressi embarked on another venture called The Founder Institute, a startup incubator and entrepreneur training program headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

[18] In 2020, Ressi launched VC Lab, a free training program for venture capitalists worldwide, as part of the Founder Institute, which was covered in TechCrunch.

Ressi emphasizes innovation in his work, aiming to transform venture capital into a force for good and to fund impactful companies.

Founder Institute targets having 80%[20] of its portfolio companies work on For Progress businesses that address one or more of the 17[21] United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.