internet-pioneer
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Jen Bekman
Jen Bekman is the founder and CEO of 20x200, the pioneering online venue that sells limited-edition fine art prints starting at $20. After a first career in the early internet (New York Online, Netscape, Disney, Meetup), she opened the Jen Bekman Gallery in Manhattan in 2003, launched the Hey, Hot Shot! photography competition, and in 2007 built 20x200 on a simple formula - small editions, accessible prices - to turn ordinary people into art collectors and help artists make a living.
Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson is the co-founder and CEO of Notable Systems, a Denver-based company using AI, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop review to turn messy healthcare paperwork into clean, usable data. Three decades before that, he co-founded Johnson-Grace, whose patented compression algorithm delivered the first online pictures on America Online in 1993 - a building block of modern streaming media. AOL acquired the company in 1996 and made him a VP running software and technology development; he later founded the personalization pioneer ChoiceStream. In 2025 Notable Systems raised a $12M Series B to push beyond order intake into full revenue cycle automation.
Jake Winebaum
Jake Winebaum is an American serial entrepreneur who has spent more than three decades turning observations into companies. He built the business plan for Disney's first internet push and ran Disney Online, co-founded the dot-com incubator eCompanies with EarthLink's Sky Dayton, founded and sold Business.com for $345 million, launched the healthcare marketplace Brighter (acquired by Cigna), and now serves as Executive Chairman of Applied Cognition. A self-described accidental entrepreneur, he is also a serious endurance athlete and the author of a business strategy and growth newsletter, the Strategy Letter.
Jin Ho Hur
Jin Ho Hur is a Co-Founder and General Partner at HRZ Han River Partners, a Menlo Park-based early-stage venture capital firm that bridges Silicon Valley and Korea's tech ecosystem. A PhD in Computer Science from KAIST and a serial entrepreneur who built and led internet companies in Korea from the mid-1990s, Hur helped shape the country's early internet economy and served as Chairperson of the Korea Internet Association. He later transitioned into institutional investing via Translink Investment before co-founding Han River Partners, which in October 2024 launched a $100 million fund focused on AI and consumer sectors within the 'Korea Graph.' He also writes the popular Substack newsletter 'Two Cents,' covering global tech and startup trends for over 9,000 subscribers.
Tim Brady
Tim Brady was Yahoo's first non-founding employee, hired by his Stanford roommate Jerry Yang in 1994 when Yahoo was still a grad-school side project. He wrote the business plan that landed Yahoo's first VC money, helped invent the banner ad format, and served as Chief Product Officer through eight years of internet history. After Yahoo, he co-founded Imagine K12 (an edtech accelerator that funded 80+ education startups), served as CEO of QuestBridge, and then spent six years as a Partner at Y Combinator working with hundreds of early-stage companies. He is one of Silicon Valley's most respected operator-turned-investors, known for his integrity, self-effacing candor, and genuine commitment to education.
Josh Kopelman
Josh Kopelman is the co-founder and managing partner of First Round Capital, one of the world's most influential seed-stage venture firms, and a serial entrepreneur who sold Half.com to eBay for $300 million in 2000. A Wharton grad who started his first company as a sophomore in 1992, Kopelman has backed over 500 startups including Uber, Square, Warby Parker, and Notion. Known for the legendary Half.com/Halfway-Oregon PR stunt and the 'Penny Gap' essay, he is a consistent Forbes Midas List honoree who describes his career as a deliberate effort to stay permanently in the first 18-24 months of company-building - the phase he loves most.
Chad Hurley
Chad Meredith Hurley (born January 24, 1977, Reading, PA) is an American entrepreneur and tech visionary best known as the co-founder and first CEO of YouTube, which he built alongside Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in 2005 and sold to Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion - just 18 months after launch. Armed with a Fine Arts degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania rather than a computer science background, Hurley's design instincts shaped YouTube's iconic UI and pioneered the embeddable video player that fueled viral growth; he had previously designed the original PayPal logo during his job interview. After stepping down from YouTube in 2010, he co-founded AVOS Systems and MixBit, launched the sports gaming platform GreenPark Sports (which raised $53M+), and in 2023 founded EyeTell, an AI-powered video script generation startup. He holds minority ownership stakes in the Golden State Warriors (NBA), LA Football Club (MLS), and Leeds United (EPL), and received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2019. Estimated at $700-800 million in net worth, Hurley remains a prolific investor and quiet force in Silicon Valley, famously reclusive despite his outsized impact on how the world creates and consumes video.
Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim is the co-founder of YouTube and the man behind the internet's most historically significant 19 seconds of footage — 'Me at the zoo,' uploaded on April 23, 2005. Born in East Germany to a Bangladeshi father and German mother, Karim built YouTube's anti-fraud infrastructure at PayPal alongside Chad Hurley and Steve Chen before pivoting to change how humanity watches video. After Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, Karim quietly enrolled at Stanford, co-founded early-stage fund Y Ventures, and became one of Airbnb's first investors. He communicates publicly almost exclusively through the description box of his single YouTube video.
Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen co-invented the Mosaic browser as a $6.85/hour student programmer, then went on to co-found Netscape, help birth the modern internet, and eventually build Andreessen Horowitz into a $42B+ venture capital juggernaut. The man who wrote 'software is eating the world' in 2011 spent the next decade proving himself right by backing Twitter, Facebook, Coinbase, and GitHub. In 2023 he published the Techno-Optimist Manifesto and in 2024 pivoted to advising the Trump administration's DOGE initiative - cementing his status as Silicon Valley's most opinionated, polarizing, and consequential voice.