Josh Abramson | |
---|---|
Born | 1981 (age 41–42) |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Richmond |
Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, Investor |
Years active | 2006–present |
Known for | CollegeHumor, Vimeo, BustedTees, TeePublic |
Spouse | Gabrielle Borden Finley (m. 2010) |
Website | twitter |
Josh Abramson (born 1981) is an American entrepreneur [1] and co-founder of the comedy website CollegeHumor. [2] [3] [4] He was one of the principal owners and founders of Connected Ventures, whose properties also included Vimeo and BustedTees, [5] [6] [7] and the co-founder, owner, and CEO of the crowdsourced T-shirt design company TeePublic. [8] [9]
Abramson and Ricky Van Veen co-founded CollegeHumor in 1999 when they were both freshmen in college, [2] [4] [10] Abramson at the University of Richmond [5] and Van Veen at Wake Forest. [4] [11] They began by posting silly photos of themselves as well as jokes, links, and other amusing material they collected from emails circulating among college students. [4] [11] Within three months the site was receiving over 600,000 visitors per month and $8,000 in monthly revenue. [11] In under a year they received a buyout offer from an Internet company called eFront for $9 million, most of which would have been financed with stock shares. Abramson and Van Veen refused the offer and continued to grow the company themselves. [11] In 2001 they added Jake Lodwick, a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Zach Klein, a friend of Van Veen's from Wake Forest. [4] [12] By the time the group graduated from college the site had earned more than $100,000 and the partners still owned 100 percent of their business, which at that time was attracting 2 million viewers a month. [11] The group moved the company to San Diego briefly [11] [13] [12] before settling in New York City in 2004, where they set up shop in a 4,800 square-foot loft in TriBeCa. [4] [11] [12]
By 2005 the site was receiving 6-8 million unique visitors each month and was generating over 5 million dollars per year in advertising and T-shirt sales. In 2006 Abramson and company sold 51% of Connected Ventures, CollegeHumor's parent company, whose properties include CollegeHumor, Vimeo and BustedTees, to Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp for a reported $20 million. [6] [7] [14]
Abramson and company created BustedTees in 2004 as a forum to sell T-shirts marketed on CollegeHumor. [3] BustedTees was included in the 2006 sale of Connected Ventures to IAC/InterActiveCorp but in 2011 Abramson bought the company back. [3] [8] [14] BustedTees later spawned TeePublic. It was included in the TeePublic sale in 2018. [15]
Abramson launched TeePublic in March 2013 with the aim of creating a self-sustaining community of T-shirt designers and T-shirt lovers. [8] The T-shirt designs are submitted by artists, designers, and celebrities, and are curated through crowdsourcing. [9]
In October 2018, TeePublic was acquired by Redbubble, a global online marketplace based in Australia, for US$41 million. [16] [17] Victoria personal LAB teamwork with collaboration
Abramson has invested in several early-stage tech companies, including BarkBox, a subscription e-commerce and content company for dog-lovers, AmberJack, a booking platform for fishing trips, ManagedByQ, an office management platform, and Shinesty, a retro clothing company, among others. [18] [19] In 2013 Abramson joined venture capital firm FirstMark Capital, the New York-based firm behind major companies like Pinterest and Shopify, in a venture partner role. [1] [20]
Abramson grew up in Timonium, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. [4] He and fellow CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen were friends since the sixth grade and attended Dulaney High School together. [11] [13]
Abramson resides in New York City. In April 2010, he married Gabrielle Borden Finley. In 2022, he opened a wine bar in Manhattan's Lower East Side neighborhood. [21]
Dotdash Meredith is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, home, food, finance, tech, beauty, lifestyle, travel, and education. It operates brands including Verywell, Investopedia, The Balance, Byrdie, MyDomaine, Brides, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Liquor.com, Lifewire, TripSavvy, TreeHugger, and ThoughtCo. In August 2012, About.com became a property of IAC, owner of Ask.com and numerous other online brands, and its revenue is generated by advertising. In addition to its Manhattan headquarters, Dotdash Meredith maintains offices elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area, as well as in Des Moines, Iowa, and Birmingham, Alabama.
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CollegeHumor is an Internet comedy company based in Los Angeles. Aside from producing content for release on YouTube, it was also a former humor website owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC) from 2006 until January 2020, when IAC withdrew funding and the website shut down. Since then, CollegeHumor has continued to release content on YouTube and its streaming service, Dropout. The site featured daily original humor videos and articles created by its in-house writing and production team, in addition to user-submitted videos, pictures, articles and links. Created by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen in 1999, CollegeHumor is operated by CH Media, which also operates Dorkly.com and Dropout.tv, and formerly operated Drawfee.com.
Dulaney High School is a secondary school in Timonium, Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The school serves a generally upper-middle class suburban community, with students from Timonium and surrounding areas in Baltimore County. Dulaney is a Blue Ribbon School and ranked No. 259 nationwide in Newsweek magazine's 2010 survey of top public high schools in the U.S. It is situated on 45 acres (18 ha) adjacent to Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. Their main rival is Towson High School.
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Richard Rafael Van Veen is an American entrepreneur and the Head of Global Creative Strategy at Facebook. Van Veen co-founded the comedy brand and humor website CollegeHumor and the video sharing website Vimeo. He was also CEO of Notional, a television production company spun out of CollegeHumor.
Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and previously worked at eBay. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hunch. He was #1 on the Midas List in 2022. Dixon is known as a cryptocurrency and Web3 evangelist.
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BranchOut was a Facebook application designed for finding jobs, networking professionally, and recruiting employees. It was founded by Rick Marini in July 2010, and was, as of March 2012, the largest professional networking service on Facebook. The company sold its assets to HR Software Company 1-Page in November 2014 and the staff was picked up by Hearst.
Redbubble is a global online marketplace for print-on-demand products based on user-submitted artwork. The company was founded in 2006 in Melbourne, Australia, and also maintains offices in San Francisco and Berlin.
Sheila Lirio Marcelo is a Filipino-American entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and CEO of Proof of Learn, whose mission is to provide accessible, high-quality next-generation technology education globally through a learn and earn protocol.
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Jacob Lodwick is an American software engineer, serial entrepreneur and investor, best known as co-founder of Vimeo.
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TeePublic is a platform for custom apparel and designs owned by Redbubble. The company was founded by Adam Schwartz and Josh Abramson, who had previously co-founded Vimeo and CollegeHumor.
Moshe Koyfman is an American businessperson and investor.
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