Josh Elman - Board Member of Greylock Partners - airfocus Product Hero

Who is Josh Elman?

Josh Elman is an investor, board member, and project manager for several of today’s biggest tech companies. He's had a lasting impact on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, Musical.ly (now TikTok), and Robinhood. 

Based in San Francisco, Elman got his start in the early 2000s as an engineer working on RealPlayer. RealPlayer was an app used to play different types of media on multiple platforms. While this is now a built-in feature for most devices, it wasn't so common at the time. As such, the product found an audience in hundreds of millions of users. 

Today, Josh Elman primarily serves as a board member at Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm with roots stretching back to 1965. Elman recently announced that he will be working with Apple in some capacity on its App Store, which will likely lead to him stepping back from Greylock Partners. 

What is Josh Elman known for?

While most of our product heroes are known for a few key accomplishments, Josh Elman's career seems to have taken him to the forefront of virtually every major digital platform we use today. 

You might know Elman as a board member of Greylock Partners or (soon) as one of the minds behind Apple's App Store. 

In the past, Elman has worked on products and services that eventually became (or already were) major mainstream hits. He was an early investor in Medium, a popular publication platform where anyone can share their writing. He led investments in Musical.ly, which would eventually become TikTok. As if that wasn’t enough, he even developed key features for Facebook, including Facebook Connect/Login.

After looking through Elman's accomplishments, it seems that what he is best known for is finding products that have potential and then capitalizing on that potential. Most of the companies he works with experience a boost in users after implementing his ideas, and as such, he is highly sought after in the world of bleeding-edge tech. 

Keep up to date with his movements via Twitter: he’s @joshelman.