Mitchell 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 and the founding Chair of Mozilla, creator of Firefox. His successful early investments in the Internet sector, streaming media, and virtual reality earned him a reputation for seeing around corners.For over a decade at Kapor Capital, Mitch and his wife, Dr. Freada Kapor Klein, have invested in tech startups which close gaps of access, opportunity, and outcome for low-income communities and communities of color, and in 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, fixing leaks at every stage of the tech pipeline. Mitch serves on the board of SMASH, a non-profit founded by Freada to help underrepresented students hone their STEM knowledge, while building the networks and skills for careers in tech and the sciences.Mitch and Freada are co-authors of the newly released book Closing the Equity Gap, which details how to create wealth while simultaneously addressing the inequalities in startup investing. “Genius,” Mitch likes to say, “is evenly distributed by zip code, but opportunity