Jake Hurwitzis best known for making people laugh through smart and quick comedy. He became popular as a writer and performer on the hit web series Jake and Amir, created for the website CollegeHumor. Hurwitz later co-founded the comedy company HeadGum, which produces podcasts and digital shows. His creative work online helped shape a new kind of comedy for the internet age. Fans enjoy his clever humor and strong chemistry with longtime collaborator Amir Blumenfeld. He grew up in a large family with one brother and four sisters. His father, Samuel, practiced Judaism, and his mother, Laura, practiced Christianity. He attended Hebrew school and celebrated a Bar Mitzvah, and his family also observed Christmas and Easter.
For high school, he went to Hamden Hall Country Day School in Connecticut. After graduation, he studied at several schools, including Hunter College and The New School University in New York City.
Jake Hurwitz began his career in 2006 as an intern at CollegeHumor. He was soon hired as a full-time writer and performer, where he contributed to both online videos and written content. In 2009, he starred in The CollegeHumor Show, a sketch comedy series that aired on MTV for one season. His most well-known work came through the web series Jake and Amir, which he co-created with fellow CollegeHumor writer Amir Blumenfeld. The show, which started in 2007, featured the two playing exaggerated versions of themselves and quickly became the longest-running series on CollegeHumor, with over a billion total views. Hurwitz usually played the straight man, reacting to the odd and unpredictable behavior of Amir’s character. The show ended in 2015.
In 2013, Jake and Amir expanded their creative work by launching a podcast called If I Were You, where they gave humorous advice to listener-submitted questions. The podcast became a hit and continued weekly until its final episode in April 2023. After leaving CollegeHumor in 2015, Jake, Amir, and their partner Marty Michael started a podcast company called HeadGum. Their own podcast became the main show of the network, which later grew to feature a wide range of popular comedy and entertainment podcasts.
Jake also became one of the co-hosts of Not Another D&D Podcastin 2018. In that show, he plays a character named Hardwon Surefoot. The podcast quickly gained a large following and became one of the top-earning shows on Patreon. In addition, he and Amir created another web series called Lonely and Horny, which first aired on Vimeo in 2016. The second season of the show was later produced by CollegeHumor. That series ended in 2019, around the time their collaboration with CollegeHumor came to a close. Through online video, podcasting, and content creation, Jake Hurwitz has built a strong career in digital comedy and media.