Josh Abramson

Abramson and Ricky Van Veen co-founded CollegeHumor in 1999 when they were both freshmen in college, Abramson at the University of Richmond and Van Veen at Wake Forest.^{[2][4][10][11][7]} They began by posting silly photos of themselves as well as jokes, links, and other amusing material they collected from emails circulating among college students.^[4][10] Within three months the site was receiving over 600,000 visitors per month and $8,000 in monthly revenue.^[10] In under a year they received a buyout offer from an Internet company called eFront for $9 million, most of which would have been financed with stock shares. Abramson and Van Veen refused the offer and continued to grow the company themselves.^[10] In 2001 they added Jake Lodwick, a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Zach Klein, a friend of Van Veen's from Wake Forest.^[4][12] By the time the group graduated from college the site had earned more than $100,000 and the partners still owned 100 percent of their business, which at that time was attracting 2 million viewers a month.^[10] The group moved the company to San Diego briefly before settling in New York City in 2004, where they set up shop in a 4,800 square-foot loft in TriBeCa.^{[13][4][10][12]}

By 2005, the site was receiving 6-8 million unique visitors each month and was generating over 5 million dollars per year in advertising and T-shirt sales. In 2006 Abramson and company sold 51% of Connected Ventures, CollegeHumor's parent company, the properties of which include CollegeHumor, Vimeo and BustedTees, to Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp for a reported $20 million.^[8][9][14]

Abramson and company created BustedTees in 2004 as a forum to sell T-shirts marketed on CollegeHumor.^[3] BustedTees was included in the 2006 sale of Connected Ventures to IAC/InterActiveCorp but in 2011 Abramson bought the company back.^[3][5][14] BustedTees later spawned TeePublic. It was included in the TeePublic sale in 2018.^[15]

Abramson launched TeePublic in March 2013 with the aim of creating a self-sustaining community of T-shirt designers and T-shirt lovers.^[5] The T-shirt designs are submitted by artists, designers, and celebrities, and are curated through crowdsourcing.^[6]

In October 2018, TeePublic was acquired by Redbubble, a global online marketplace based in Australia, for US$41 million.^[16][17]

Abramson has invested in several early-stage tech companies, including BarkBox, a subscription e-commerce and content company for dog-lovers, AmberJack, a booking platform for fishing trips, ManagedByQ, an office management platform, and Shinesty, a retro clothing company, among others.^[18][19] In 2013 Abramson joined venture capital firm FirstMark Capital, the New York-based firm behind major companies like Pinterest and Shopify, in a venture partner role.^[1][20]

Abramson grew up in Timonium, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore.^[4] He and fellow CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen were friends since the sixth grade and attended Dulaney High School together.^[10][13]

Abramson resides in New York City. In April 2010, he married Gabrielle Borden Finley. In 2022, he opened a wine bar in Manhattan's Lower East Side neighborhood.^[21]