Jeff Pulver

Jeff Pulver is an American Internet entrepreneur and futurist known for his work as an innovator in the field of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

While the earliest forms of this technology were initially developed in the 1970s, it was in the early 1990s that advances in computer technology allowed the first proper software and internet applications to be developed in Israel by VocalTec.

Pulver graduated from Great Neck North High School in 1980, and subsequently attended Hofstra University, where he graduated with a degree in accounting.

Throughout his high school and college years, he earned extra money as a freelance computer programmer and running his own small consulting company, which provided an entry to his eventual career path.

Pulver began his career in accounting and was hired out of college by a client of his consulting firm, New York-based Margolin, Winer & Evens LLP, in 1984.

Within his first year at the company, he convinced his supervisors to offer computer services to clients.

Two years later in 1987, while still at the firm, he founded a new business, Spreadsheet Solutions Corp. to market add-ins for Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel.

Margolin, Winer & Evens invested initial venture capital in this company.

Pulver's interest in amateur radio continued until the 1990s when he redirected his efforts into internet telephony, and he retains the call sign WA2BOT.

Pulver's ownership and management of Spreadsheet Solutions Corp. provided the next step in his career when he sold the company to Cantor Fitzgerald in the early 1990s.

As a result of the sale, Pulver and his small team were subsumed into Cantor Fitzgerald's IT department.

By the mid 1990s, he had become a vice president of information technology at the company.

During this time, Pulver became interested in the nascent technology of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

The first consumer-level application for VoIP, VocalTec's Internet Phone (IPhone), was launched shortly thereafter in February 1995.

Members of the amateur radio community adopted the use of the IPhone program, and Pulver became one of the application's most prominent proponents, speaking on behalf of VocalTec's interests and establishing a mailing list of early users.

In September 1995, Pulver teamed first with Izak Jenie, and later Brandon Lucas, to establish an experimental platform for VoIP communications called Free World Dialup.

Subscribers to the platform could communicate with one another, but not with others outside the platform.

In November, Pulver officially launched Free World Dialup as the world's first internet telephony network, as well as the first true VoIP business venture, incorporating the platform with the IPhone technology.

Pulver pursued all of these activities at night while simultaneously holding his day job at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Seeking a term to encapsulate these emerging technological applications, he coined the acronym 'VON' (which stood for Voice/Video On the Net), which would later provide both nomenclature for the industry and the origin for many of Pulver's later companies and organizations.

By March 1996, interest in VoIP and Free World Dialup had increased, and 300 companies involved in the telephone and telecommunications industry filed a joint petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting that the sale and operation of internet telephony software be banned in the United States, and that the makers of the software be regulated in the same manner as traditional phone companies.

Ten days after the petition was filed, Pulver launched his first lobbying organization, the VON Coalition; 110 companies from around the world quickly joined.

As leader of the group, Pulver organized the initial opposition to FCC regulation of VoIP.

He also wrote a book, The Internet Telephony Toolkit, which offered explanations of the technology and predictions for the industry's future.

Pulver's expertise and advocacy led to him being identified as "the internet telephony industry's first celebrity and most vociferous proponent."

While becoming more and more involved in these activities, Pulver became disenchanted with his work at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Pulver's early work in VoIP with his company Free World Dialup led to a significant regulatory decision by the Federal Communications Commission in 2004 which classified VoIP as an internet application, rather than as a telephony service which would be subject to government tariffs and regulations, a decision which paved the way for the development of video and voice internet communications.

A serial entrepreneur who has invested in over 400 startups, Pulver is also known for his work as the co-founder of Vonage, the VON Coalition, Vivox, and Zula, as well as for his early investments in Twitter and Foursquare.

Pulver's latest ventures have included the development of Web3 applications, including the issuances of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies.

In addition to working with partner companies, he has also had a cryptocurrency issued in his honor, and designed and issued his own NFTs.

He has organized conferences and spoken extensively on the development of VoIP telephony, the evolution of the internet, and technological futurism, and created an online school, pulveREDU, centered on internet technology topics.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he moved his conference activities online branded under the Jeff Pulver Entertainment banner, with his latest events, the Web3-focused VON3 Summit and Blue Lava Conference, having taken place in January and February 2022.

He is also engaged in lobbying activities for the need to develop an alternative to government regulation of internet and telecommunication applications.

Jeff Pulver grew up in a Jewish family in Kings Point, New York.

As a child, he was introduced to amateur radio by his uncle Fred Pulver, who worked in cable television.

Developing an immediate interest in the technology, he sought and obtained an amateur radio license at age 12 after a three-and-a-half year process.

By the time he was a teenager, in the dawn of the personal computer age, he began creating software to track his radio contest logs.

At age 18, his interest in tinkering led him to improvise a way to make telephone calls from his car by connecting a two-way radio to his home phone.

Using amateur radio to talk with people all over the world helped spark his lifelong interest in international communication technology.

Pulver later stated that "it was amateur radio that unlocked my connection to voice over IP."