Andrew S. Rappaport

Rappaport (left) and Glenn L. Smith at SXSW 2005. Photo by Jon Lebkowsky

Andrew S. Rappaport or Andy Rappaport (born 1957) is an American Silicon Valley venture capitalist partner; he works with August Capital, an information technology venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California.

In the last three years he has become recognized as one of the largest American Democratic Party donors and philanthropist with his wife Deborah Rappaport.

He has three daughters, Leah, Sara and Rebecca.

Career

Andy Rappaport joined August Capital in 1996. His expertise is in the areas of technology and finance related to open-source software, broadband communications, semiconductors, and computer systems. He has more than 15 years of experience as a founder, investor, and/or director of venture-backed start-ups. He has served on more than 30 public and private company boards.

Prior to joining August Capital, he was involved in more than a dozen venture capital-backed start-ups since 1985 including Actel, Atheros Communications, Genoa Corp, MMC networks, Silicon Architects (acquired by Synopsys), Silicon Image, Viewlogic, and Transmeta. For over thirteen years he was the president of the Technology Research Group (TRG), a Boston-based strategy consulting firm he founded in 1984. Before starting TRG, Andy was Senior Editor of EDN Magazine. He was also a research physicist with Panametrics, Inc. In his early 20s he was founder and president of his own audiophile consumer-electronics company.

Rappaport was also a founder of the Massachusetts Center for Technology Growth, a private economic-development organization and a director of the Massachusetts Microelectronics Center. In the early 1970s Andy attended Princeton University, but dropped out in the second year. He also holds a US patent.

He has lectured and written on the economics of changing technology. The Computerless Computer Company, which he wrote together with Shmuel Halevi, won the McKinsey award for Harvard Business Review article of the year in 1991.

Andy is a guitarist, composer and guitar collector. He and his wife, Deborah Rappaport, are the founders of the Rappaport Family Foundation and Skyline Public Works that funds a variety of non-profit organizations and some commercial ventures too. One of the commercial ventures they sponsor is Huffington Post. They also fund the Participatory Culture Foundation, an open source video based browser developer.

Sources

• NPR report on guitar collecting featuring Andy Rappaport
• Skyline Public Works biography on the Rappaports

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