Friday Q&A: Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital

Josh Kopelman is angry.

When Technically Philly pops into his office, the normally cheery venture capitalist is busy trying to figure out why First Round Capital’s email service is down.

“They say six minutes of downtime,” he says. “but they’re way over that.”

After a brief phone conversation (he would later blog about the downtime) he immediately returns to his normal upbeat demeanor and for good reason: Kopelman is one of four founding partners of one of the most active early-stage investment companies in the country. The firm has become as much of a brand as the companies it invests in, boasting the most-visited VC site on the web.

Located in a small, nondescript office building in West Conshohocken, the firm has expanded to San Francisco and will open its New York City offices next week, giving it a headquarters in two of the largest technology communities. The firm is setting a new standard in investment by making a high number of smaller, early stage investments while nurturing companies from the ground up.

First Round, however, is just the latest chapter in the Wharton grad’s career. Kopelman, a New York native, started Internet information company Infonautics while still in college and almost didn’t stay in Philadelphia.

“Once you have 17 people in the company with mortgages and me without, that pressured me to stay,” he says, “Then I grew attached to the area, built networks and planted some roots here and started Half.com.”

Since then, Philly has treated him well: Kopelman and his partners sold Half.com to eBay for $350 million in 2000, giving Philadelphia one its biggest tech “wins” in the Web 1.0 times. After starting and selling Turntide to Symantec in less than a year, Kopelman switched from entrepreneur to investor, making Philadelphia home to one of the most influential Internet investment firms in the world.

We sat down with Kopelman to talk about his take on Philadelphia, what kinds of companies he looks for and why Philly (and every other city) has no comparison.

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Friday Q&A: Adam Dotson from SeventySix Capital

Adam Dotson

Technically Philly would like to begin with an apology.

In Tuesday’s VC Roundup, we speculated that ETF Ventures chose their new name based on their proximity. Turns out, the opposite was true.

“The reason we wrote it out (as SeventySix instead of 76), actually, was to not be associated with the highway,” says Associate Adam Dotson.

When the VC firm formally known as Eastern Technology Fund changed its name this week, it was mostly due to the rise in popularity of exchange traded funds, a sort of mutual fund for alternative investments. The resulting confusion between ETF the firm and ETF the investment vehicle prompted the group to rebrand themselves as SeventySix Capital: an homage to what Dotson calls the “entrepreneurial spirit of our founding fathers.”

The company also wanted to have a clearer connection to Philadelphia.

Below, we ask Doston for the rejected names as well as the difference between Philly startups and 67th Ward or D.C. startups.

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Friday Q&A: Steve Barsh, CEO of Packlate.com

Update: Minor copy edits. Changed logo.

As reported in this week’s Venture Capital Roundup, Steve Barsh has had a busy week.

The DreamIt Ventures managing partner got his tons of national press for his latest startup, Packlate.com, from TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. The company, based in University City (though with plans to move to West Conshohocken) aims to be a last-minute vacation booking service and has received funding from ETF Ventures and First Round Capital.

“It’s not a rocket ship yet, but it is kind of jiggling on the launchpad,” says Barsh.

Barsh says the idea has been brewing for years as he mentored young entrepreneurs at DreamIt while maintaining vacation properties in Utah.

“You know the saying ‘Those who do, do. And those who don’t, teach? I like to do both,” he says.

Currently he says he is still dedicating ten percent of his time to DreamIt but says he wants to focus most of his efforts on his new startup. We spoke with Barsh about Packlate’s future, how DreamIt can survive with preoccupied management and when we’ll be able to book a Jersey Shore vacation with Packlate.

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CoTweet heading to Bay Area after $1.1 million round, rumors of Twitter “acquisition target”

After announcing $1.1 million in venture capital investments, once Central Pennsylvania-based CoTweet is moving to San Francisco, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The company, which develops a web-based application for Twitter that allows businesses to assign multiple team members to control commercial accounts, received funding from West Conshohocken-based First Round Capital and a handful of other non-Philly firms. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly uses CoTweet for forward-dated Twitter posts]

According to two job openings recently added to the company’s internal job board, the company is headed for the SoMa neighborhood of downtown San Francisco, an area well-known for its roots in the dot com boom.

CoTweet executives are in the process of packing their bags, according to several messages posted to Twitter from company co-founders.

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Josh Kopelman called ‘richest man in town,’ among most networked venture capitalist

Josh Kopelman is apparently not entirely comfortable with being a big shot.

The entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, who made his name on the back of the $355 million sale of his creation Half.com to eBay in 2000, has been a bit of a big fish in an underdeveloped Philadelphia pond for some time now. But he doesn’t always take adulation so warmly.

Kopelman was reportedly put off by the label of the wealthiest self-made person in Philadelphia, author W. Randall Jones told the Inquirer. For his new book, the Richest Man in Town, Jones traveled to 100 U.S. cities to collect business wisdom from those atop the income brackets in their towns and found Kopelman to be our pick of the litter.

“He was very upset with me,” Jones told the Inqy.

While Kopelman may have disliked the thought of being placed above a host of the city’s billionaire’s boys club, it’s not the only big call he’s gotten this week.

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Symantec purchases company in First Round portfolio

Symantec Corp, maker of Norton anti-virus software, has acquired Mi5 Networks, provider of super-fast Web security products. While Mi5 is based on that other, less awesome coast, their largest financier, First Round Capital, has offices in West Conshohocken. In a phone interview, Lead Partner Josh Kopelman confirmed the deal but said the details of the transaction are remaining private at this time. CNET is reporting that it was an all-cash exchange. Symantec will integrate the company’s technology that protects users from Web-based threats into its existing software platform by later this year.