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Josh Abramson
American entrepreneur From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Josh Abramson (born 1981) is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of the comedy website CollegeHumor.[1][2][3][4] He was one of the principal owners and founders of Connected Ventures, whose properties also included Vimeo and BustedTees, and the co-founder, owner, and CEO of the crowdsourced T-shirt design company TeePublic.[5][6][7][8][9]
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Career
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CollegeHumor
Abramson and Ricky Van Veen co-founded CollegeHumor in 1999 when they were both freshmen in college, Abramson at the University of Richmond and Van Veen at Wake Forest.[2][4][10][11][7] 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][10] Within three months the site was receiving over 600,000 visitors per month and $8,000 in monthly revenue.[10] 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.[10] 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.[10] The group moved the company to San Diego briefly before settling in New York City in 2004, where they set up shop in a 4,800 square-foot loft in TriBeCa.[13][4][10][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.[8][9][14]
BustedTees
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][5][14] BustedTees later spawned TeePublic. It was included in the TeePublic sale in 2018.[15]
TeePublic
Abramson launched TeePublic in March 2013 with the aim of creating a self-sustaining community of T-shirt designers and T-shirt lovers.[5] The T-shirt designs are submitted by artists, designers, and celebrities, and are curated through crowdsourcing.[6]
In October 2018, TeePublic was acquired by Redbubble, a global online marketplace based in Australia, for US$41 million.[16][17]
Venture Capital Financing
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]
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Personal life
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.[10][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]
References
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