Josh Silverman | |
Birth Date: | 14 January 1969 |
Occupation: | Entrepreneur |
CEO of Etsy |
Joshua Gordon Silverman (born January 14, 1969)[1] is an American entrepreneur and technology executive who is chief executive officer of Etsy. He is known for co-founding the invitation website Evite and being CEO of Skype (2008–10) and shopping.com (2006–08).
Silverman grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he attended Community High School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in public policy from Brown University in 1991, after which he spent two years working for New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley.[2] In 1995 he enrolled at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; he earned his MBA from Stanford in 1997.
In November 1998, Silverman quit his job at ADAC Laboratories[3] to work full time on building what would become Evite.[4] Evite was acquired by Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp in 2001. In 2006, Silverman became CEO of Shopping.com, a comparison-shopping engine owned by eBay.[5] In February 2008, he was named CEO of Skype.[6] He left Skype in 2010 to join Greylock Partners as an executive-in-residence, before moving on to an executive role at American Express.[7]
Silverman joined the board of Etsy in November, 2016. After an activist investor took a stake in the company and called for it sale, Etsy's board ousted longtime CEO Chad Dickerson and installed Silverman as chief executive officer.[8] [9]
Silverman is married and has two children. and is a Jew