espite being coastally challenged (currently living in Philadelphia), 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 – an Internet information company. In 1996, Infonautics went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Too long...
Yes, this blog is still alive. I’ve gotten several emails over the last few weeks commenting on the slow pace of my blog posts. The last few weeks have been pretty busy and the blog suffered as a result. But I’m now working on several new posts that should begin to appear over the next few days. In the meanwhile, a few small items:
- Now that First Round Capital has over 30+ companies in our portfolio, one of my goals for the new year is to help make stronger connections between our portfolio companies. Most early-stage companies share similar challenges (recruiting, business development, customer acquisition) and I think that there is a real benefit to sharing best practices. That was the thinking behind the First Round Capital CEO Summit – which we held last month in Menlo Park. It seems that the feedback from the attendees was very positive and we're looking to make this an annual event. I'd like to thank the CEO’s of our portfolio companies for their active participation, as well as our guest speakers including Michael Arrington (Techcrunch), David Rose (the Pitch Coach), Greg Mrva and Bradley Horowitz (Yahoo), Jorge Espinel (AOL), Heather Harde and Adam Bain (Fox Interactive) and Chris Sacca (Google) and a few of our friends from other venture firms. Also - major thanks to Rob Hayes and Carly Spoljaric on the First Round Capital team for putting the day together. Pictures can be found here.
- I just finished reading Safa Rashtchy’s massive report on Internet Advertising. It’s over 400 pages and full of stats…one of the best reports on the space that I’ve seen – and it’s free. It is around 6MB and you can download it here (Warning - pdf file takes a while to load).
- I wanted to join Rob Hayes in welcoming aboard First Round Capital's first Analyst, Mazen Araabi. Maz has a strong entrepreneurial background, with stints at Xdrive.com, ResponseBase, and ReachLogic. He also already has his first woulda coulda shoulda -- he was part of the founding team at MySpace.com, but left in 2004 to get his MBA. Welcome aboard Maz!
- I realize that I never officially welcomed my partner Chris Fralic to the blogosphere. Chris has Nothing To Say...
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