Joshua Kopelman is an

America The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

, and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

. Kopelman has consistently been ranked as one of the world's top 20 venture capitalists. He was the founder of

First Round Capital First Round Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan First Round typically provides seed-stage funding and focuses on po ...

, and before that, a founder of

Half.com Half.com was a fixed-price online marketplace for books, textbooks, music, movies, video games, and video game consoles. It was acquired by eBay in 2000 and shut down in 2017, with the domain redirected to the eBay website. Half provided a platf ...

, which he sold to

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

in 2000. He also founded

Infonautics Infonautics, Inc. was an information services company, founded in 1992 by Marvin Weinberger, Lawrence Husick, and Josh Kopelman, and had its headquarters in Wayne, Pennsylvania, United States. It was a spin-out from Telebase, Inc., which retained ...

and

TurnTide TurnTide Inc. was an anti-spam technology company founded in 2004 and based in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. The firm was created as a spin-off corporation from privacy and anti-spam technology firm ePrivacy Group to bring to market the world's f ...

. Kopelman was chairman of the board of ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', often referred to simply as ''The Inquirer'', is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded on June 1, 1829, ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is the third-longest continuously operating da ...

'' from 2015 to 2024, when he was elected chair emeritus.

Early life and education

Kopelman grew up in

Great Neck, New York Great Neck is a region contained within Nassau County, New York, Nassau County, New York (state), New York, on Long Island, which covers a peninsula on the North Shore (Long Island), North Shore and includes nine incorporated villages, among th ...

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...

, the son of Carol and Dr. Richard Kopelman.New York Times: "Rena M. Cohen, Joshua Kopelman"
August 13, 1995 His father was a professor at

Baruch College Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City, United States. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the colle ...

and his mother a real estate broker. He attended the

Wharton School The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...

at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, graduating in 1993 with a BS in Entrepreneurial Management and Marketing. In 1992, during his sophomore year at the Wharton School, Kopelman co-founded

, based in

Wayne, Pennsylvania Wayne is an unincorporated community centered in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States, on the Main Line, a series of highly affluent Philadelphia suburbs located along the railroad tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and one of the ...

Career

Infonautics and Half.com

In 1996, his startup

went public on the

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

stock exchange. Three years later, in 1999, Kopelman left Infonautics to found

, a

fixed price A fixed price is a price designated for a good or a service that is neither subject to bargaining nor bartering. The price may be fixed since the seller has placed it, or given that the price is managed by the authorities under price regulati ...

marketplace platform for used books, music and videos. He sold Half.com to eBay in 2000 for $300 million. After selling Half.com to

in 2000, Kopelman remained with eBay for three years.

Turntide

In 2004, Kopelman co-founded

, an anti-spam technology company that was acquired by

Symantec Symantec may refer to: * Gen Digital, an American consumer software company formerly known as Symantec * Symantec Security, a brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, ...

within six months of its founding.

First Round

In 2004 Kopelman was the co-founder of

, a seed-stage venture fund. In 2007, Kopelman helped to coin the phrase the "implicit web" to describe the

Semantic Web The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding o ...

. Kopelman in 2013 was managing director of First Round Capital, and an investor, director, and advisor to

OnDeck Capital OnDeck Capital is an American small business lending company with offices in Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Denver, CO Denver ( ) is a consolidated city and county, the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. It is lo ...

, Flatiron Health,

Aster Data Systems Aster Data Systems was a data management and analysis software company headquartered in San Carlos, California. It was founded in 2005 and acquired by Teradata in 2011. History Aster Data was co-founded in 2005 by Stanford University graduate stu ...

Knewton Knewton is an adaptive learning company that has developed a platform to personalize educational content as well as has developed courseware for higher education concentrated in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The ...

Gigya Gigya, Inc. was a technology company founded in Tel Aviv, Israel and headquartered in Mountain View, California, with additional offices in New York City, New York, Tel Aviv, London, Paris, Hamburg, and Sydney. Gigya was purchased by SAP in 2017. ...

AltSchool Altitude Learning (formerly AltSchool) is an American education and technology company founded in 2013. It is headquartered in San Francisco. History Max Ventilla founded AltSchool in 2013 as a company that operated schools built around a perso ...

, The Black Tux,

Five Below Five Below, Inc. is an American chain of specialty discount stores that prices most of its products at $5 or less, plus a smaller assortment of products priced up to $30. Founded in 2002 by Tom Vellios and David Schlessinger and headquartered in ...

, Massdrop, Like.com, IronPort,

Mint.com Mint, also known as Intuit Mint and formerly known as Mint.com, was a personal financial management website and mobile app for the US and Canada produced by Intuit, Inc. (which also produces TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Credit Karma). Mint's prima ...

, Monetate,

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

ModCloth ModCloth is an American online retailer of indie and vintage-inspired women's clothing based in Los Angeles. History Modcloth was founded in 2002 by Susan Gregg Koger and Eric Koger. Susan and Eric were students at Carnegie Mellon University an ...

AppNexus Xandr, formerly known as AppNexus, is an American multinational technology company operating a Cloud computing, cloud-based software platform that enables and optimizes programmatic online advertising. Headquartered in the Flatiron District of Ne ...

BankSimple Simple (formerly BankSimple) was an American neobank based in Portland, Oregon. It was recognized as the first neobank and operated between 2009 and 2021. The company provided FDIC-insured checking accounts to U.S. citizens, but not to permane ...

, Swipely, True & Co., Wanelo,

Warby Parker Warby Parker Inc. is an American eyewear brand and retailer of prescription glasses, contact lenses, and sunglasses, based in New York City. Founded in 2010, it was initially an online-only retailer. It now receives (about two-thirds) of its r ...

, Ring.com, Numerai, OpenX, LiveOps, Boxed.com, Clover Health,

Upstart Upstart or upstarts may refer to: * HMS ''Upstart'', a Royal Navy U-class submarine * Upstart (company), an online lending marketplace * Upstart (software), a process management daemon used in several operating systems. * Upstart (sculpture), a pub ...

and

Discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. F ...

. As of 2014, Kopelman was an inventor on 16 U.S. patents for his work in internet technology. First Round by 2014 had invested in 300 technology startups. In 2016, he remained with First Capital as a managing director. After First Round Capital invested in "Uber-Cab" in 2010 for $510,000, the firm profited significantly in 2019 when Uber had its initial public offering. In March 2020, he took part in a $4.2 million funding round for Coursedog.

Boards

He joined the board of the

Philadelphia Media Network The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC (formerly Philadelphia Media Network (PMN)) is an American media company. It owns ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' and ''Philadelphia Daily News''. The company is owned by The Philadelphia Foundation, a nonprofit or ...

, later ''

'', in 2015. In 2016, he was elected chairman of the board of directors of ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', a position he continued to retain as of 2020. He finished his term in June 2024 after reaching his term limit. Kopelman was elected by the board to a three-year term as chair emeritus.

Recognition

In 2008, Kopelman ranked 3rd on the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' list of Top Venture Capitalists and has ranked in the top 20 of the ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

Midas List The ''Forbes'' Midas list is the annual ranking by ''Forbes'' magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the "Oscars for venture capitalists in tech," the Midas List uses parameters ...

of the top 100 tech investors, including 18th in 2011, 6th in 2012, 12th in 2013, 11th in 2014, 4th in 2015, 6th in 2016, 35th in 2017, 19th in 2018, 39th in 2019, and 79th in 2020. In 2007, Kopelman was named one of "Tech's New Kingmakers" by ''

Business 2.0 ''Business 2.0'' was a monthly magazine publication founded by magazine entrepreneur Chris Anderson, Mark Gross, and journalist James Daly in order to chronicle the rise of the " New Economy". First published in July 1998, the magazine was sold ...

'' magazine, as a "Rising VC Star" by ''

Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fate * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (19 ...

'' magazine in 2008, and as one of the top ten angel investors in the United States by ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

'' in 2014.

Personal life

In 1995, Kopelman married Rena Cohen, an attorney, in

. Kopelman and his wife as of 2021 lived in a suburb of

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

with their two children. In 2001, he and his wife created the Kopelman Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic organization to provide start-up grants to social entrepreneurs. In 2002, the Kopelman Foundation funded a project to digitize and host the complete text of the

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the ...

online.

References

External links

Redeye VC
Josh Kopelman's blog {{DEFAULTSORT:Kopelman, Joshua 21st-century American Jews Living people American Internet company founders American philanthropists American technology chief executives American venture capitalists Businesspeople from New York (state) EBay IronPort people People from Great Neck, New York Philanthropists from New York (state) Wharton School alumni Year of birth missing (living people)