Jonathan Kaplan, New Coast Adventures. Courtesy photo

A venture capital firm in Austin, Texas, announced Wednesday that the former chief legal officer of the online coupon company RetailMeNot is slated to become its first chief operating officer.

Jonathan Kaplan, who starts in August, will be responsible for all operations at Next Coast Ventures including financial planning and reporting, investor relations, legal, human resources, compliance, and diversity and inclusion efforts.

He most recently worked as the chief legal officer of RetailMeNot, also based in Austin, where he helped guide the company through a $630 million acquisition by Harland Clarke Holdings in 2017. Two years after the acquisition finalized, he said he was seeking a new challenge.

“An operational role was something that I really wanted to take on,” Kaplan told Corporate Counsel. “The thing that I keep in mind is that you can't do the same things as CLO in a COO role. You have to take a step back and approach things differently.”

Before becoming a lawyer, Kaplan was the president and CEO of Technical Production Support Inc. He said that experience gave him more empathy for entrepreneurs and will inform his role as chief operating officer.

“The firm is focused on helping entrepreneurs grow great companies and having been in that world, I'm drawing on that experience,” Kaplan said. “I'm excited and grateful to be in the role.”

Thomas Ball, the co-founder and managing director at Next Coast Ventures, said in an email that as the firm began to think about its expansion they wanted someone who understands the operational needs of a venture capital firm and the needs of entrepreneurs.

“His legal expertise is going to be highly additive not just to our own administrative processes and internal operations, but to our efforts to best serve our investors and our portfolio leadership,” Ball said.

Right now, Kaplan is the only in-house attorney at Next Coast Ventures. He said he plans on growing the legal department only if the firm requires it. Kaplan was replaced by Seth Randle at RetailMeNot. Randle serves as the company's chief legal counsel and compliance officer.

Kaplan's role as chief operating officer follows a trend of companies making lawyers business executives. Earlier in July, the general counsel of Ideaya Biosciences took on the additional role of chief financial officer. Rich Baer, the chief legal officer of Liberty Media, was made the chief administrative officer and responsible for talent development and recruiting.