Josh is a founding Partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage technology venture fund. Josh has been an active entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since its commercialization.
In 1992, while he was a student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Josh co-founded Infonautics Corporation – and took it public on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1996. Josh founded Half.com in July of 1999, and led it to become one of the largest sellers of used books, movies and music in the world. Half.com was acquired by eBay in July 2000 -- and Josh remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual gross merchandise sales. In late 2003 Josh helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world's first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later.
Josh founded First Round Capital in 2004 to reinvent seed-stage investing. And since that time the firm has invested in over 200 emerging technology startups – becoming one of the most active venture capital firms in the country. Josh was ranked fourth on Forbes 2015 “Midas List” of the top 100 tech investors. Josh has been named as one of the top ten ‘angel investors’ in the United States by Newsweek magazine, one of "Tech's New Kingmakers" by Business 2.0 magazineand a "Rising VC Star" by Fortune magazine. Josh also is the proud winner of a second place ribbon in the 2011 Nantucket Watermelon Eating competition.
Josh is an inventor on thirteen U.S. Patents for his work in Internet technology. In June 2000, he was awarded Ernst and Young’s prestigious “Entrepreneur of the Year” award for the Greater Philadelphia region.
Josh earned a Bachelor of Science degree cum laude in Entrepreneurial Management and Marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Member, Board of Directors @ From 2015 to Present (less than a year) Greater Philadelphia AreaDirector, Board of Directors @ From 2015 to Present (less than a year) Board Member @ Philadelphia Media Network (PMN) is publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com From 2015 to Present (less than a year) Philadelphia,Founder and Partner @ First Round Capital is an early stage venture capital firm. We are seed-stage investors, often providing a company’s first outside capital, and aren’t afraid of investing in pre-revenue companies. We understand the challenges of launching a new enterprise, having founded/funded over 250 companies in the last few years. From October 2004 to Present (11 years 1 month) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2009 to Present (6 years) Director, Board of Directors @ Monetate is a full-service post-click marketing platform. We personalize your visitor’s site experience through messaging and promotions based on more than 50 visitor-attributes and literally billions of permutations. Our customers have achieved triple-digit lift in conversion, revenue, and customer acquisition, and double-digit reduction in customer acquisition cost. Many of our campaigns do not require discounting or promotions, and therefore have zero promotion cost. Our customers have achieved positive ROI in days, and report that they are getting these results spending approximately 1 hour per week on Monetate-related activities. We are Software-as-a-Service and deploy through a single javascript tag on the site - there is no coding required. From 2008 to Present (7 years) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2008 to Present (7 years) Co-founder and Trustee @ The Kopelman Foundation provides financial support to qualified not-for-profit organizations for selective projects matching the criteria outlined at http://www.kopelman.org From November 2001 to Present (14 years) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2014 to 2014 (less than a year) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2007 to 2014 (7 years) Board of Advisors Member and Investor @ enhance the online shopping experience with social commerce applications that drive sales. Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews™ and Ask & Answer™ deliver immediate success by minimizing implementation risk and maximizing the strategic impact of user-generated review content through complete customization, deep integration, community management, advanced analytics, search engine optimization, and syndication across the Web and to offline channels.
Bazaarvoice was named to the 2007 Red Herring Global 100 and 2006 Red Herring Top 100 lists and received the 2006 ClickZ Marketing Innovation of the Year award. Bazaarvoice currently serves over 200 eCommerce leaders including Bass Pro Shops, Dell, Macy’s, Office Depot, Inc., Overstock.com, PETCO, QVC, Sears, and ZipRealty. The company has headquarters in Austin, TX and offices in London, Paris, and Singapore. From 2005 to 2012 (7 years) Chairman, Board of Directors @ From September 2005 to April 2011 (5 years 8 months) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2011 to 2011 (less than a year) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2010 to 2011 (1 year) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2010 to 2011 (1 year) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2009 to 2011 (2 years) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2008 to 2010 (2 years) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2008 to 2010 (2 years) Director, Board of Directors @ From 2006 to 2010 (4 years) Member, Board of Directors @ Main Line Health is suburban Philadelphia's most comprehensive healthcare resource, operating four of the region's most-respected hospitals. From 2006 to 2009 (3 years) Member, Board of Directors @ From 2006 to 2007 (1 year) Member, Board of Directors @ From January 2001 to December 2005 (5 years) Managing Director @ Midas Capital was founded to manage my personal private equity investments.
Visit http://www.midascapital.com to see portfolio. From 2000 to December 2005 (5 years) Founding Chairman, Board of Directors @ TurnTide is the world's first anti-spam router. It works by disrupting the economic model of spammers and literally reaches across the Internet and keeps spam from leaving the spammer's servers. The company was acquired by Symantec in July of 2004. From February 2004 to July 2004 (6 months) Entrepreneur-in-Residence @ From 2004 to 2004 (less than a year) President, Half.com -- an eBay Company @ Ran the Half.com business unit for eBay. From June 2000 to April 2003 (2 years 11 months) Founder and President, Half.com @ Founded Half.com, a leading person-to-person marketplace for books, music, movies and games. Sold business to eBay in 2000. Continued to run business unit until 2003. From June 1999 to June 2000 (1 year 1 month) Co-Founder and Executive Vice President @ From June 1991 to June 1999 (8 years 1 month)
Entrepreneurial Management and Marketing @ Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania From 1989 to 1993 Josh Kopelman is skilled in: Entrepreneurship, Affiliate Marketing, Mergers, Licensing, Consumer Marketing, IPO, Content Strategy, Start-ups, Venture Development, Cross-functional Team..., Program Management, Venture Capital, Corporate Development, Christmas cards, Product Management, Strategic Partnerships, Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity, Cloud Computing, Strategy, E-commerce, Strategic Planning, SaaS, Angel Investing, Enterprise Software, SEO, Business Development, Negotiation, Analytics, Business Strategy, Digital Marketing, Management, Leadership, Digital Media, Executive Management, Mobile Devices, Marketing, Product Marketing, Sales, Online Advertising, Mobile Applications, Competitive Analysis
Websites:
http://redeye.firstround.com,
http://feeds.feedburner.com/redeyevc,
http://www.firstround.com/our_portfolio.html