Gregory Galant | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Employer(s) | Muck Rack Shorty Awards |
| Honours | Dashboard 25 Innovator 25 Americas Entrepreneur of the Year (Florida) |
Greg Galant is an American programmer, founder, and entrepreneur. In 2008, he co-founded the Shorty Awards, and in 2009, he co-founded Muck Rack, a public relations management platform that indexes and fosters networking with journalists. He has been named as an influential entrepreneur by several organizations like PRWeek , PRovoke Media, and Entrepreneur of the Year.
The son of two Newsday journalists, Galant was born in Huntington, New York. As a "bored teenager" in Long Island, he learned programming from a young age and helped create websites for local businesses like The Long Islander newspaper. [1]
In 2005, Galant debuted Venture Voice, a podcast dedicated to sharing the experiences of entrepreneurs. Later, in 2008, Galant co-founded and became the executive producer of the Shorty Awards, an annual awards show acknowledging contributions to short-form content online. [2] [3]
In 2009, Galant and Lee Semel co-founded Muck Rack, a platform that was originally created in order to help journalists network during the emergence of social media by tracking tweets. [2] [4] Over time, Muck Rack grew to become an artificial intelligence-powered platform and database that provides tools, like monitoring and reporting, for the public relations industry to connect with journalists. [5] [6] The platform has also expanded its scope to encompass print content, podcasts, job updates, and newsletters. [7] [8] [9] [10] In 2022, Galant and Semel had their first Series A funding round for Muck Rack and raised $180 million from Susquehanna Growth Equity; previously, the company had been self-funded and profitable on its own. [11] [12] By then, Muck Rack indexed tens of thousands of journalists, and its database customers included International Rescue Committee, Google, Duolingo, Zapier, and others. [13] [12]
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Galant helped launch the Work Remotely Forever Pledge, an initiative advocating for remote work to be normalized. [14] Galant is also the CEO of Sawhorse Media, the umbrella company which oversees Muck Rack and the Shorty Awards. [1] Additionally, Galant frequently reports on the state of the public relations industry in the United States, as well as the ongoing debate over in-person versus remote work. [15] [16] [17] [18]
In 2011, Galant was named for PRWeek's Dashboard 25. [19] In 2022, he was named in PRovoke Media's Innovator 25 Americas. [2] In 2024, he was a Florida winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year program. [20]