Mitch Kapor

Mitch Kapor is a pioneer of the personal computing industry and long-time startup investor. He founded Lotus Development Corporation and designed Lotus 1-2-3, the “killer application” which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980s. He is the co-founder of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which protects freedom and privacy on the Internet and served as the founding Chair of Mozilla, creator of the Firefox web browser. His successful early investments in the Internet sector, and in streaming media and virtual reality earned him a reputation for seeing around corners. Along with his wife Freada Kapor Klein, for the past decade at Kapor Capital Mitch has developed a vision and practice of investing in tech startups which close gaps of access, opportunity or outcome for low-income communities and communities of color and on founders from underrepresented groups. Through the work of the Kapor Center, Mitch and Freada take a comprehensive approach to removing barriers in education and the workplace for all and fixing the leaks at every stage of the tech pipeline. Mitch serves on the board of SMASH, a non-profit founded by Freada to help underrepresented scholars hone their STEM knowledge while building the networks and skills for careers in tech and the sciences. “Genius,” Mitch likes to say, “is evenly distributed by Zip Code, but opportunity is not.”