Tom Phillips is an American businessman most closely associated with publishing ventures. He was the founding publisher of Spy magazine, and a founding member of the original management team at Starwave. After the acquisition of Starwave by Disney, Phillips served simultaneously as the president of ABC News Internet Ventures and ESPN Internet Ventures, joint endeavors between Disney and Starwave. In 1998, Phillips was hired as the CEO of Deja.com, and sold the company's core assets to Google and eBay. In 2006, he took a position with Google, as director of print advertising, running advertisements for Google clients in newspapers and other print publications. [1] He was subsequently put in charge of the acquisition process in Google's purchase of DoubleClick and then served as Director of Search and Analytics at Google. He left in 2009 to become CEO of Dstillery.
Phillips received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1977 and his MBA from Stanford University in 1981. [2]
Lawrence Edward Page is an American businessman, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.
Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang is an American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. and founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures.
Starwave was a Seattle, Washington-based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and led by CEO Mike Slade. The company produced original CD-ROM titles, including Muppets Inside, and titles for Clint Eastwood, Sting, and Peter Gabriel. They were the original developers of Castle Infinity, the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game for children, but Starwave's most lasting mark was in the area of web content sites. They developed ESPN.com, ABCNEWS.com, Outside Online, and Mr. Showbiz.com among other sites, setting the standard for much of the commercial Internet explosion of the late 1990s. Starwave also developed the first site and publishing system for Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com.
Susan Lynne Decker is an American businesswoman. She was president of Yahoo! Inc in 2007 and 2008, leading the operations of the company while Jerry Yang was chief executive officer. In 2017, Decker co-founded a social networking platform called Raftr.
David Oliver Sacks is a South African entrepreneur, author, and investor in internet technology firms. He is a general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Additionally, he is a co-host of the All In podcast, alongside Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. Previously, Sacks was the COO and product leader of PayPal, and founder and CEO of Yammer. In 2016, he became interim CEO of Zenefits for ten months. In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb.
Jeff Stibel is an entrepreneur, having started numerous technology and marketing companies, and a venture capital investor, as co-founder of Bryant Stibel.
Powerset was an American company based in San Francisco, California, that, in 2006, was developing a natural language search engine for the Internet. On July 1, 2008, Powerset was acquired by Microsoft for an estimated $100 million.
Gideon Lee Yu is a Korean-American technology, media and sports investor, executive and advisor.
Timothy M. Armstrong is an American business executive. He was formerly the CEO of Oath Inc., then a subsidiary of Verizon Communications that served as the umbrella company of its digital content subdivisions, including AOL and Yahoo!. Previously, he was the CEO of AOL Inc. from 2009 until its purchase by Verizon in 2015.
Bret Steven Taylor is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is most notable for leading the team that co-created Google Maps and his tenures as the CTO of Facebook, as the chairman of Twitter, Inc.'s board of directors prior to its acquisition by Elon Musk, and as the co-CEO of Salesforce. Taylor was additionally one of the founders of FriendFeed and the creator of Quip. Since 2023, he is chairman of OpenAI and a board member of Shopify.
James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.
Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi is an Italian-American businessman and venture capitalist.
Erick Miller is a CEO, technology entrepreneur and investor who began his career building startups during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s in San Francisco, California. Miller is the Founder and CEO of CoinCircle, and founding managing director of Hyperspeed Ventures and the former CEO and Founder of Vergence Labs, a company known for designing and developing wearable computer enabled video streaming glasses under the brand name Epiphany Eyewear as well as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) eyewear.
Jason E. Klein is an American media executive. He is the founder and CEO of VC firm On Grid Ventures LLC, an advisory and investment firm in digital media, marketing and information focused on GeoDisruptive businesses. He is also chairman of Harvard Business School Angel Investors of New York and co-president of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels Association. He was the president and CEO of Newspaper National Network LP from 2003 to 2012.
Robert J. ("Bob") Davis is a managing partner of Highland Capital Partners. He is the former chief executive officer of Lycos, which he led since its inception and through its acquisition by Terra at the peak of the dot-com bubble.
Pete Flint OBE is a British internet entrepreneur and investor based in San Francisco. He is the founder and former chairman and CEO of Trulia. Formerly, he was part of the founding team at lastminute.com. He is currently a managing partner at NFX, the early stage venture capital fund focused on network effect businesses.
David Wendell Phillips is an American lawyer, businessman and investor. He is an angel investor in Silicon Valley, an experienced Internet executive, entrepreneur, and attorney.
Chuck Davis is an Internet entrepreneur, and Chairman and CEO of Prodege, LLC, an El Segundo, California-based online marketing and consumer research company.
Rich LeFurgy is an American advertising consultant and investor. The founding chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, he left a senior position at a Madison Avenue agency in 1995, becoming one of the first advertising executives to shift from traditional to digital media. Described as the "godfather of internet advertising standards," LeFurgy was central to the development and adoption of the standards that guide online advertising.
Aaron LaBerge is an American technology executive and the chief technology officer (CTO) of Penn Entertainment. Prior, he was the president and chief technology office of Disney Entertainment and ESPN., where he was responsible for linear and digital media distribution technology, ad technology, consumer data platforms, and the development of all streaming and consumer-facing digital products for the company globally. It was announced that he was leaving Disney on April 22, 2024.