Jake Risman

Jake Risman is a San Diego–based entrepreneur and the co-founder of Mankind Investment Group, a family office that develops ground-up multifamily and urban infill housing with its own capital. He and his longtime business partner, Steven Maman, act as both general partner and limited partner on their projects, with a stated preference for buy-right sites, timelines under three years, and value engineering at every step.

He arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Kyiv, Ukraine, grew up in Walnut Creek, California, and earned a marketing degree from San Diego State University. His first business, a computer repair company started in his senior year, became ItzSolved in 2009 — a managed IT services firm serving San Diego businesses, built through acquisition and sold within 18 months at a tenfold return.

In 2010 he and Maman began building e-commerce companies together: 10DollarMall, an online apparel store where everything cost under $10, followed in 2012 by ModDeals, a discount fashion retailer. Run as a single operation, the two stores sold more than 2 million units a year and generated over $20 million in combined annual revenue before they were acquired in 2015. Alongside them, the pair founded Shoemagoo, a discount footwear retailer that was named to the Inc. 5000.

"We are relentlessly passionate about efficiency and value engineering. We are not building the Taj Mahal — we are building value for all stakeholders involved."

Watching returns pile up on the wrong side of the retail supply chain, they steered Shoemagoo away from selling shoes and toward solving the returns problem itself. In 2018 that business became Upstrēm, a technology-enabled reverse-logistics company that helped national retailers such as Amazon, Macy's, and Foot Locker recover value from returned and excess inventory. As CEO, Risman led the company through three consecutive years of triple-digit profitable growth, a $20 million institutional raise, an investment from Corbel Capital Partners, and an $8 million credit facility from Pacific Mercantile Bank. Upstrēm was acquired and now operates as Vendidit Upstream under DeJoria Stephens Enterprises.

He then served as co-CEO of Leafgistics, applying the same logistics playbook to California's cannabis supply chain as the exclusive logistics partner to LeafLink, the largest venture-backed wholesale cannabis platform in the country.

Having invested passively in real estate throughout, Risman and Maman formed Mankind Investment Group in 2024 to become operators in the space. Their current portfolio spans more than 200,000 square feet of living space across San Diego's urban core. Risman is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) and lives in San Diego with his wife and their three children.