Josh Felser

Atheist, Brainstormer, Business mentor, Change agent, Entrepreneur, Investor, Philanthropist

I am a serial entrepreneur turned investor with a little Playa mixed in. I Co-founded the first Internet music company, Spinner, in the 90s and the darknet turned public video-sharing company, Grouper/Crackle in the 00s. We sold Spinner to AOL and Grouper to Sony for a combined $385mm. I am now a seed investor at Freestyle, Co-founded by me and Dave Samuel. We have made 40 investments over the last 3.5 years and are known for being "operator investors". I have started a stealth non-profit to galvanize my tech community to build an online platform to aggregate climate change actions in a social/viral setting. I also manage the theme camp, Toobopolis Watering Hole: A Liquid Love Story. You can find us serving alchoholic libations and music at Burning Man. I have a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Duke University in 1986 and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Duke's FUQUA School of Business in 1990. I am on the board of Duke's Center for Entrepreneurship.

Building mutant vehicles for Burning Man

The current climate change movement is a well-intentioned, yet fragmented, niche effort, dominated by scientific modeling of a terrifying future without meaningful actions that we can take to make a difference. It's time we in the tech community built a platform that enables mass market socialization of the climate change actions that can have the greatest impact.

I have spent the last 5 years attending TED soaking up its magical energy and being inpsired. This year is my first as a true participant as I seek to collaborate with other attendees to make a difference on climate change and spread the gospel on my own climate change non-profit.

Playing the didgeridoo