 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(February 2020) |
Michael Bruno is an American entrepreneur and the founder of 1stdibs. [1] He is also the founder of the home design app Housepad, [2] Tuxedo Hudson Company [3] and Tuxedo Hudson Realty, [4] and Art-Design-Carta. [5]
Michael Bruno was the fourth of six children. He was born and raised in Larchmont, New York. [6] He is a former competitive swimmer and Junior Olympics winner. [1]
Bruno studied business at San Diego State University and later moved to San Francisco, California, where he worked as a real estate broker. [7]
During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, Bruno worked as a real estate agent for Sotheby's real-estate division in San Francisco. [8] [9] Bruno says he was inspired to get his real estate license at age 19 after reading Napoleon Hill's 1937 self-improvement book Think and Grow Rich . [10]
In 2001, after moving to Paris, France, Bruno created 1stdibs.com, an online luxury marketplace for antiques, jewellery, and fine art. [11] He said the idea for the company came to him while visiting the Clignancourt flea market in Paris. [12]
In 2011, Bruno accepted a $60 million investment from venture capital firm, Benchmark, and stepped down from his role as CEO of 1stdibs but stayed on as chief creative officer. [13]
In 2012, Bruno bought a 12,000-square-foot mansion in Tuxedo Park, New York. The mansion was designed in the early 1900s by John Russell Pope. Bruno also owns a historic park adjacent to the Tuxedo Park property. The 55-acre park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed Central Park in New York City. [14] The Tuxedo Park home was featured in a July 2015 photo tour in design magazine Elle Décor. [10]
In 2015, Bruno launched an interior design app called HousePad, a digital household management tool that allows homeowners to communicate with family, guests, interior designers, and staff. [15]
In 2016, Bruno launched Design Carta, a private marketplace for art and design professionals. [16] He also founded Tuxedo Hudson Realty, a commercial and residential real estate company, [4] and Blue Barn, an organic farmstand, that same year. [17] [18]
In May 2012, New York-based charity organization Lighthouse International honored Bruno and fashion designer Carolina Herrera for being "fashion visionaries." [19] Bruno was also a recipient of the 2012 "Innovators" award from the Sir John Sloane Museum Foundation. [20]
In October 2014, Bruno was the recipient of design and decorating magazine Traditional Home's first Trailblazer Award. [7]
Bruno is a collector of historic properties and has been purchasing and restoring historic homes and properties since the 1990s. [21] He says his passion for historic preservation began with the purchase of a 1920s-era villa designed by William Templeton Johnson. [2] Bruno owns several additional historic properties in and around Tuxedo Park, including Loomis Laboratory, a stone castle built in 1901. [4] The Loomis Laboratory building serves as headquarters for Bruno's Housepad app. [4] Bruno and his partner Alexander Jakowec purchased a 14,000 square-foot mansion on Coopers Neck Lane in Southampton, New York in 2015. [22] The mansion was built in the early 20th century by American architect and urban planner Grosvenor Atterbury. [22]
Bruno lives with his partner Alexander Jakowec, a former antiques dealer. [11]