Apple hires venture capitalist, who led early investments in TikTok precursor Musical.ly, for App Store role

Josh Elman led early investments in Musical.ly, which was acquired by ByteDance and merged with its video-sharing service TikTok

His experience in identifying and investing in apps that later became hits could help Apple better promote software in the App Store

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Apple’s App Store generated almost US$54 billion in revenue for the company in its latest financial year to September. Photo: EPA

Published: 1:58pm, 1 Dec 2020Updated: 1:58pm, 1 Dec 2020

Apple has hired Josh Elman, a former venture capitalist at Greylock Partners who led early investments in TikTok precursor Musical.ly, to work on the App Store.

Elman’s role will focus on app discovery for customers, he said in a statement on Monday.

He will step back from investing and the corporate boards that he serves on, which includes the communications app Discord and blogging site Medium.

Until last year, Elman was the vice-president of product at Robinhood Markets, the wildly popular stock-trading app.

Josh Elman, a former venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, expects to focus on app discovery for customers in his new role at Apple. Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images

Elman’s experience in identifying and investing in apps that later became hits could help Apple better promote software in the App Store, which generated almost US$54 billion in revenue for the company in its latest financial year to September.

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