Adrian Scott (entrepreneur)

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Adrian Scott
Born
Alma mater Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur, technologist, investor, actor
Known forFounder of Ryze
Founding Investor of Napster
Website www.adrianscott.com

Adrian Scott is a social networking site founder, technology entrepreneur, investor, and film and TV actor. He is best known as founder of the social networking site Ryze in the summer of 2001, and as a founding investor in Napster.

Contents

Education

Scott graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at age 16 with a B.S. cum laude in Mathematics, and received his Ph.D. in Mathematics at age 20. He then taught management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University as a visiting scholar for a semester. [1] He was awarded the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary Civil Air Patrol's General Carl A. Spaatz Award. [2]

Napster

As an angel investor, Scott put some of the first money into Napster, [3] the influential and pioneering peer-to-peer music service.

Ryze

Scott started building Ryze in early 2001. Ryze was a major influence on Friendster (which in turn influenced Facebook) and other social networking startups. [4] Ryze received a Webby Awards nomination in the 6th Annual Webby Awards in the Services Category. [5]

Angel investor

Scott invested in high-tech startups including Napster, BuyDirect.com (acquired by Beyond.com), and Giganet (acquired by Emulex).

Startup advisor

Scott has advised high-tech startups including Starmine (acquired by Thomson Reuters) and Plaxo (acquired by Comcast).

Board member

Scott is on the board of directors of Legitmix.

Patent

Adrian Scott is an inventor of a U.S. Patent titled "Hashing algorithm used for multiple files having identical content and fingerprint in a peer-to-network". Read More

Actor

Scott is also a film and television actor, having appeared in the feature films Hands of Stone , Historias del Canal, and The Wind and the Water, and the television show QuienTV. [6]

Press coverage

Scott has been written about in books including The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, [7] All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster, [8] The Customer Revolution, [9] and Growing Up Digital, [10] as well as in numerous magazine and newspaper articles internationally.

Related Research Articles

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Napster was a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared on the service was typically encoded in the MP3 format. As the software became popular, the company encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement. Napster ceased operations in 2001 after losing multiple lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shawn Fanning</span> American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor

Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer ("P2P") file sharing platforms, in 1999. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friendster</span> Social gaming site

Friendster was a social network based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003. Later, the company became a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Before Friendster was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages, and comments with other members via profiles and networks. It is considered one of the original social networks.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sean Parker</span> American entrepreneur and philanthropist

Sean Parker is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and serving as the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also co-founded Plaxo, Causes, Airtime.com, and Brigade, an online platform for civic engagement. He is the founder and chairman of the Parker Foundation, which focuses on life sciences, global public health, and civic engagement. On the Forbes 2022 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked No. 1,096 with a net worth of US$2.8 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reid Hoffman</span> American internet entrepreneur and author (born 1967)

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RockYou was a company that developed widgets for MySpace and implemented applications for various social networks and Facebook. Since 2014, it has engaged primarily in the purchases of rights to classic video games; it incorporates in-game ads and re-distributes the games.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music piracy</span> Copying and distribution of music without the consent of creators or copyright holders

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Qwiki was a New York City based startup automated video production company acquired by Yahoo! on July 2, 2013 for a reported $50 million. Qwiki released an iPhone app that automatically turns the pictures and videos from a user's camera roll into movies to share. The company's initial product, an iPad application that created video summaries of over 3 million search terms, was downloaded more than 3 million times and named by Apple as the best "Search and Reference" application of 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jordan Ritter</span>

Jordan Ritter is an American serial entrepreneur, software architect and angel investor. He is best known for his work at Napster, the file-sharing service he co-founded along with Shawn Fanning and others. His time at Napster was documented in Joseph Menn's book All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster and Alex Winter's film Downloaded.

<i>The Facebook Effect</i>

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References

  1. Vigoda, Ralph. "Skipping High School, Whizzing Off To College Hundreds Do It, Including A N.j. Teen".
  2. "Spaatz Award Recipients". The Spaatz Association.
  3. Menn, Joseph (2003). All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster. Crown Business. ISBN   978-0609610930.
  4. Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. ASIN   B0085473SA.
  5. Singer, Michael. "Webby Awards Announces Nominees".
  6. Adrian Scott at IMDb
  7. Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World. ASIN   B0085473SA.
  8. Menn, Joseph (2003). All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster. Crown Business. ISBN   978-0609610930.
  9. Marshak, Ronni T.; Seybold, Patricia B. (2001). The Customer Revolution. Crown Business. ISBN   978-0609607725.
  10. Tapscott, Don (1998). Growing Up Digital. McGraw-Hill. ISBN   978-0070633612.