I have worked for over 20 years in a variety of roles including company founder, venture investor, investment banker and programmer. I enjoy new challenges and always strive not to repeat myself. In June 2004, I joined Six Apart as Executive Vice President, Corporate Development. Six Apart creates blog software (Movable Type) and services (Vox and TypePad) and I'm responsible for deals, business development, partnerships and M&A.
I am a personal investor in LinkedIn, FM Publishing, TCHO Ventures, Jackpine Social Club, Technorati, Spot-On, and an adviser to a number of other internet services companies. I am chairman of the board of directors of Ebates Shopping.com and a director of SourceForge (NASDAQ: LNUX). I previously served on the boards of Loudeye (purchased by Nokia) and Accrue Software (purchased by Datanautics) from each company's founding until 1999.
From 1998 through 2003, I was a General Partner at August Capital. While at August I focused on consumer facing internet companies and led the partnership's investments in such companies as Tickle (which was purchased by Monster Worldwide), Listen.com/Rhapsody (which was purchased by Real Networks) and Evite (which was purchased by Interactive Corp.).
In late 1992, I helped raise the start-up capital for Wired magazine's launch and then co-founded and was CEO of Wired Digital, which at various times was a divison, partially-owned subsidiary or separate company from parent Wired Ventures. While at Wired Digital, I led teams that created HotWired, Wired News, HotBot, Webmonkey, Suck and a number of other good websites. Wired Digital, which was one of the 20 largest web networks in the world at my departure, was ultimately purchased by Lycos in June 1999 and soon after Lycos was purchased by Terra. Then pretty much everyone involved left and ultimately most of these sites died silent and sad deaths.
My early career was spent mostly in investment banking, I worked for five years at predecessor firms to Credit Suisse First Boston and UBS doing M&A and corporate finance transactions in the media, technology and communications space. I worked for two years at boutique merchant bank Sterling Payot and spent a year as a programmer at another start-up which unfortunately was never successful.
I graduated with a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University in 1987 and have studiously avoided formal education since.
