Jack Oppenheim
Founder & Experience Designer
Jack Oppenheim is a Virginia-based businessman, entrepreneur, and hospitality and experience designer building businesses and places around the idea of eudaimonia — a life well lived.
His work sits at the intersection of hospitality, real estate, health, wellness, community, and experience design. He is interested in a simple question: How can the places we build make life better?
Jack approaches businesses as experiences rather than simply products or services. He designs places, communities, and experiences that encourage people to participate, interact, and return — creating the kind of third spaces around which people's lives naturally begin to revolve.
Building Experiences
Jack is the Founder and CEO of Utoma, a private health and wellness third space being developed in Richmond's Scott's Addition.
Utoma is designed around total immersion: a place where members can move, recover, eat, work, and build community within a single environment. The concept combines elements of hospitality, wellness, fitness, food and beverage, and private membership culture.
Jack originated the Utoma concept and has developed the project from the ground up, including the real estate strategy, operating concept, brand, experience, and physical environment. The project is currently in development, with redevelopment planned to begin in 2027.
His approach to Utoma is informed by years of traveling and studying exceptional hospitality environments around the world — from private clubs and restaurants to wellness destinations, hotels, nightlife, and social spaces. Rather than reproducing a particular city or concept in Richmond, he looks at what makes the world's most compelling places feel different and translates those observations into new experiences.
Community as a Product
Jack is also the founder of Capital Run Club, a Richmond-based running and social community.
What began as a weekly run has grown into a community of thousands, with more than 100 participants regularly attending weekly runs and thousands following the club online. The club has expanded beyond running into yoga and Pilates activations, sauna and cold-plunge experiences, social events, and endurance challenges.
Capital Run Club reflects a broader philosophy that runs through Jack's work: people want places to belong, but they also want reasons to participate.
The result is a community built around action rather than passive membership.
Real Estate & Housing
Jack is a licensed Virginia commercial real estate agent and the co-founder and Managing Partner of Backyard Capital, a Richmond-area real estate development company focused on acquiring and developing single-family housing.
Backyard Capital is developing a model intended to increase the supply of two- and three-bedroom housing while making units available through Virginia's housing voucher system. The company's long-term objective is to develop hundreds of housing units across Richmond and surrounding counties.
Real estate gives Jack another medium through which to pursue experience design: the physical environment itself becomes part of the product.
An Entrepreneurial Foundation
Jack began building companies while studying at James Madison University.
His first major venture was Tow Ninja, an application designed to help drivers locate and retrieve vehicles after they had been towed. The company later became Clutch. Jack developed the company through his undergraduate years and graduate studies, participating in Virginia's startup ecosystem through organizations including Lighthouse Labs, Startup Virginia, and 1717 Innovation, while receiving support through the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation.
The company ultimately exited.
That experience shaped Jack's approach to entrepreneurship: start with a real problem, build around the user, test relentlessly, and create something people actually want to use.
Design, Innovation & Eudaimonia
Jack earned a bachelor's degree in American History from James Madison University in 2022, with minor concentrations in Political Science and Economics. He later earned a Master's in Product Innovation from VCU's da Vinci Center for Innovation in 2024, where he was recognized as Mr. Innovation by his graduating class.
His academic and professional background reflects the way he approaches business today: part entrepreneur, part designer, part operator, and part student of human behavior.
At the center of it is eudaimonia.
Jack builds many of the things he wants in his own life: beautiful spaces, health and longevity, great food, vibrant communities, meaningful experiences, and eventually family.
He believes that the best businesses do more than generate transactions. They create environments in which people can live better lives.
That is the kind of business he wants to build.