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Mitch Kapor founded Lotus — and James Joaquin re-introduced us on Fourth Street

Known for years from Boston conferences and mutual friends; re-connected in the Berkeley neighborhood both companies shared

About this entry

This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.

Person

Who this is

Mitch Kapor founded Lotus and became one of the era's most active philanthropic investors. Jonathan Hare had known him for years from conferences and mutual friends in Boston, and was re-introduced directly by James Joaquin — whose Ofoto offices sat in the same Fourth Street shopping district of Berkeley, near the Marina, as Consilient's. The neighborhood itself is part of the record: San Francisco real estate was impossibly hot, Erik Freed lived in the Berkeley Hills, and the serious database talent was all in the East Bay anyway — Sybase in Emeryville, the Stonebraker lineage at UC Berkeley — so Consilient's address was a talent strategy wearing a lease.

Per S-112: met in the Lotus / GO Corporation / EFF era — at PC Forum, or possibly Agenda; the hedge is the author's — through Esther Dyson among others, because everyone knew Mitch. Reconnected years later via James Joaquin when Kapor moved to the Bay Area and built the Kapor orbit — Kapor Capital with Freada Kapor Klein, the Kapor Center in Oakland, the foundation, SMASH — having co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 with Barlow and Gilmore. Half a dozen visits to the San Francisco and Oakland offices since.

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Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.

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This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.

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Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.

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