
Executive Chairman, Founder at LinkedIn
San Francisco Bay Area

Executive Chairman, Founder at LinkedIn
San Francisco Bay Area
All aspects of consumer internet and software. Focus is on finance, business strategy, and development, but includes product management, operations, business operations, business development, and marketing. Focus is on seed-stage technology companies, but have also helped profitable companies grow.
General management, product development, business models, strategy, negotiation, financing, deal structure, international, marketing, brand development, brand management, business development, public relations, press strategy, payments infrastructure, financial services, mergers and acquisitions, start-ups, software development, operations centers.
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
June 2009 — Present (2 months)
Working on key strategic issues day-to-day at Linkedin. Focus is broad strategy and key initiatives. Linkedin connects the worlds professionals to make them productive and successful. In the modern competitive world, staying informed and finding the right resources is key to success. Your professional network is how.
(Privately Held; Computer Games industry)
March 2008 — Present (1 year 5 months)
The internet leader in social games.
(Higher Education industry)
July 2006 — Present (3 years 1 month)
College Eight is a residential educational college part of UCSC. The focus is environmental citizenship, ranging from topics of enviromental civics and justice to environmental enterpreneurship. The new educational goal is to achieve academic excellence through current research and teaching, and also through connections with business and government. The principal focus of the college is helping foster the next generation of green entrepreneurs.
(Non-Profit; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
June 2006 — Present (3 years 2 months)
Kiva provides an entrepreneur's marketplace for social micro-lending. The entrepreneurs are pre-vetted by micro-finance organizations. They are then listed on Kiva's web marketplace, and interested and motivated lenders can lend money for the creation of businesses. It is the paradigm case of teaching to fish rather than giving fish.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
December 2005 — Present (3 years 8 months)
The teen social network for teens. It's a place on the web only for teens - hip, interesting, and cool. Within a short time, it has millions of teens; and the most interesting parts are still to arrive.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
August 2005 — Present (4 years)
Evangelists and champions of the free and open web-platform, Firefox. Firefox allows consumers the experience they want, all software and internet companies to build extensions, and open-source developers to contribute freely and democratically. Firefox works to keep a free, open web -- both through its own platform and by inspiring other browsers to create open apis and platforms with great consumer experiences.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)
June 2003 — Present (6 years 2 months)
Best IT infrastructure and enablement for grassroots campaigns for corporations. Grassroots campaigns are extremely important for the modern corporation, as regulation, political competition, and risk mitigation are essential. The best way to solve these problems: utilize your corporation's constintuency as a political force. And corporations do have constituencies -- employees, shareholders, customers, partners, vendors, and others.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
June 2003 — Present (6 years 2 months)
Vendio provides best of breed, easy-to-use services for small businesses on eBay and on the Internet. Vendio also provides a great price-checking and comparing toolbar so that you never overpay on the internet again: www.dealio.com.
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
April 2003 — Present (6 years 4 months)
SixApart produces the best publishing platforms on the web for self-expression through words, pictures, and other media. For self-hosting and business, it produces the leading blogging software MoveableType. For hosted web publishing with great looks and effective tools, SixApart has the best blogging service TypePad. And for younger web communities, it has LiveJournal. Recently, SixApart has launched Vox which allows great sharing within your own private community -- your family, your friends, and your neighborhood as you want it.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Textiles industry)
January 2003 — Present (6 years 7 months)
Lulan imports top-quality textiles from socially great women's collectives in Asia to the U.S. market, transformed into the best products.
(Internet industry)
September 2000 — Present (8 years 11 months)
Helped finance over 60 companies, 25+ from initial conception. Angel investor in www.facebook.com, www.zynga.com, www.digg.com, www.bioscale.com, www.nanosolar.com, www.lulan.com, www.taxipass.com, www.naseeb.com, www.technorati.com, www.grassroots.com, www.friendster.com, www.socialtext.com, www.realtravel.com, www.rhythmnetworks.com, www.targetedgrowth.com, www.wikia.com, www.adventsolar.com, www.bioscale.com, www.ning.com, www.tagged.com, www.tinypictures.us, www.etology.com, www.winster.com, www.rupture.com, www.jaxtr.com, www.kongregate.com, www.powerset.com, www.care.com, www.funnyordie.com, www.ironport.com, www.dopplr.com, www.flixster.com, www.care.com, www.flickr.com, www.last.fm, www.grockit.com, www.mashlogic.com, www.opencandy.com, www.knewton.com, www.permuto.com, www.grouply.com, www.seesmic.com, www.ping.fm, and www.sixapart.com.
M.St. , Philosophy , September 1990 — June 1993
B.S. , Symbolic Systems , 1985 — 1990
Diploma , Highschool , 1982 — 1985
Civil society, education, public intellectuals, values, ethics, travel, environment, technology
Marshall Scholarship, Dinkelspiel Award, Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize (Proxime Accessit)