Howard Lee Morgan is an American venture capitalist, philanthropist, socialite, angel investor, author and contributing writer for Business Insider. He also serves as the chairman, CEO, director, board member or advisor for an assortment of companies including , Arca Group, Idealab, Math for America and managing partner for First Round Capital with partners Josh Kopelman, Chris Fralic, and Rob Hayes. According to Business Week, Morgan is said to be "connected to 28 board members in 28 organizations across 31 different industries". He has been listed on the Forbes 2009 list of Executives and Directors, was ranked #12 on CouldAve's Top 30 Most Respected Venture Capitalist for 2011 and #1 in Philadelphia.
After earning his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Morgan was granted a faculty position with their Department of Computer Science in September 1968. He went on to work as Professor of Decision Sciences at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and also Professor of Computer Science at the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania. During his academic career Morgan also served as an editor of Communications of the ACM, Management Science, Transactions on Office Information Systems and Transactions on Database Systems. His research on user interface technology, and on optimization of computer networks led to his bringing the ARPAnet to Philadelphia in 1974. As a result of this early participation in the Internet, he advised many corporate and government agencies on the uses of electronic and voice mail, implementing it throughout the Wharton School in the mid 1970s. Morgan continued to work as a professor from 1972 through 1985.
Authorship
After working with the Association for Computing Machinery, he was published continuously in a number of their publications from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The notice from his work in the early stages of the Internet prompted Morgan to begin authoring a number of his own books on the subject. Since the early 1970s to the present, he has published many books ranging from computer science, business investment, and marketing. Books
Early entrepreneurship
Howard Morgan's decision to transition from class to corporate capital was based on the technological expansions of the 1980s. The private sector of the time saw small startups like Microsoft make billions and potential for other revolutions in the industry were just as possible. In 1982 he was one of the original team members at Renaissance Technologies Corp., founded by James Simons. And from 1983 to 1989 served as president where he supervised venture capital investments in high technology companies. He was also a founding board member and technical advisor of Franklin Electronic Publishers, one of the first manufacturers of personal computers, before its sale. He has been an active consultant and speaker to users and vendors in the information systems area for more than 30 years, and has worked with many of the Fortune 100 companies and numerous government agencies.
Venture capital and investments
Since 1989, he has been president of the Arca Group, Inc., a consulting and venture capital investment management firm specializing in the area of computer and communications technologies. Arca Group nurtures ventures and has taken them from seed stage through initial public offerings, including MetaCreations Corporation, a computer graphics software company, Infonautics Corporation, which provides search products and services on the internet and MyPoints.com, Inc. – the leading direct e-mail provider. He has been involved in more than three dozen startups and was a lead investor in the formation of Bill Gross’s Idealab, a Pasadena based incubator for internet companies. Idealab also founded Internet Brands which operates many media and e-commerce websites. Howard Morgan served as a board member on Internet Brands until the media company was acquired in December 2010 by Hellman & Friedman for a reported $640 million. In 2004 Morgan partnered with Josh Kopelman, Chris Fralic, and Rob Hayes to form the venture capital firm First Round Capital. The group specialized in providing seed-stage funds to technology companies. The Philadelphia-based firm is reported to provide seed-stage investments that have ranged between $250,000 to $500,000. In addition, the company has backed more than 70 companies, including VideoEgg, Outright, LinkedIn, SkillSlate and several other firms. In an interview for This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis, he mentions that they look for passionate people with million dollar ideas and a vision to get there. In 2017, after retiring from First Round Capital, Morgan joined as chairman, where he oversees the firm's investment, product strategy, partnership and development efforts, and the scope and breadth of firm operations. Morgan was ranked #12 in the 2011's Top 30 Most Respected Venture Capitalist. The list included Morgan among other such as Brad Feld of Foundry Group, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. However, First Round Capital was the only company to receive 3 positions on the list.
Elizabeth Morgan : was hired as a trader for Goldman Sachs & Company and was later promoted to managing director. As of early to mid-November, she was promoted to treasurer. In 2011, Goldman Sachs said that Mrs. Hammack had a partner's position with the company.
Danielle Morgan : graduated with a B.S. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 and later became a private investigator for the Legal Service of Waldman & Associates. She then in November 2005 married Kevin Koplin, a former assistant district attorney and current lawyer with McCabe, Flynn & Arangio. Afterward, she was hired to work as an investigator for Kern Informative Resources, Inc and has done so for the last 6 years.
Philanthropy
After receiving the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 1997, Howard Morgan and his wife Eleanor decided to establish the Eleanor and Howard Morgan Foundation. Their foundation has since made many contributions to a host of other charities including but not limited to the Chabad on Campus International Foundation, Math for America, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Public Radio stationWNYC and many more over the years. They also helped to fund the 90-minute television program in 2002 entitled 'New York in Song' which featured great songs and obscure songs about New York to raise funds to provide college scholarships for children of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
