Jason Calacanis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jason Calacanis | |
|---|---|
 Calacanis at Gnomedex 5.
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| Born | November 28, 1970 Brooklyn, New York City |
| Occupation | Internet entrepreneur / Blogger |
Jason McCabe Calacanis (born November 28, 1970 [1] in Brooklyn, New York) is an American internet entrepreneur and blogger. His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York, and his second venture capitalized on the growth of blogs before being sold to AOL.
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[edit] Rising Tide Studios
A native of Brooklyn, with Greek and Irish origins[1], Calacanis attended Fordham University. During the dot-com boom, he was active in New York's Silicon Alley community and in 1996 began producing a publication known as the Silicon Alley Reporter. Originally a 16-page photocopied newsletter, as its popularity grew it expanded into a 300-page magazine, with a sister publication called the Digital Coast Reporter for the West Coast. Calacanis's tireless socializing earned him a nickname as the "yearbook editor" of the Silicon Alley community [2].
His company, Rising Tide Studios, also hosted conferences and became known for its lavish parties. It had a staff of about 70 people, including conference organizer Xeni Jardin, who would later become a journalist and blogger at Boing Boing. Others involved in the company who would go on to become well-known in the blogging community include Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org, Clay Shirky, and Tristan Louis.
With the end of the boom, the company failed and had to lay off much of its staff.[2] The Silicon Alley Reporter was renamed the Venture Reporter in September 2001 and refocused on venture capital deals. Calacanis subsequently sold the business to a publishing company, Wicks Business Information, and it ultimately ended up in the hands of Dow Jones & Company.
[edit] Weblogs, Inc.
After selling Rising Tide, Calacanis co-founded Weblogs, Inc. with Brian Alvey. They built the company as a network of blogs supported by advertising, also taking an angel investment from Mark Cuban. They recruited freelance bloggers to provide content and grew to about 50 sites within a year. One of the more popular sites, Engadget, was created by Peter Rojas (previously a co-founder of Gizmodo), whom they offered an equity stake in the company in order to leave competitor Gawker Media.
Calacanis is known for being outspoken and moderately transparent about Weblogs, Inc., going so far as to give updates on the company's Google AdSense earnings. Time Warner's America Online agreed to buy Weblogs, Inc. in October 2005 for an amount reported to be about $25 million.
[edit] Netscape.com
Six months into his tenure with AOL, Calacanis was offered a chance to be the General Manager of the new Netscape website. Lead developer Alex Rudloff used the model pioneered by Digg, Del.icio.us, and Furl and added an editorial layer to the system. The project has launched and occupies the front page of Netscape. He has hired some of the top users of social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Newsvine and Flickr to go to Netscape as Netscape Navigators [3], which prompted a public debate with Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.
On November 16, 2006, TechCrunch[4] had reported that Calacanis has resigned from his position as CEO of Weblogs, Inc. and General Manager of Netscape. Calacanis later confirmed this with a post at his blog.
[edit] Sequoia Capital
On December 5, 2006, Techcrunch[5] reported that Calacanis was going to announce his new position at Sequoia Capital as an EIA (entrepreneur in action). Calacanis later confirmed on his blog.
[edit] Media appearances
Calacanis was also profiled in the The New Yorker and Wired during the dot-com boom. The profile from The New Yorker was titled "the connector" and was the basis for Malcolm Gladwell's "connectors" described in the book The Tipping Point. Calacanis was featured on the cover of Forbes along with Rojas and Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin.
Calacanis was a consultant on, and appeared in, The Center of the World, a film by Wayne Wang with Peter Sarsgaard.
[edit] CalacanisCast Beta
In late 2006, Calacanis began publishing a beta version of his CalacanisCast podcast / vidcast on his personal site as a prelude to a formal show due to launch on Podtech.net in early 2007.
[edit] References
- ^ "My retirement party.", The Jason Calacanis Weblog, 28 November, 2005. Retrieved on April 21, 2006.
- ^ Silicon Alley Reporter Goes Under, ClickZ, News, October 8, 2001
- Brown, Eryn. "Revenge of the Dotcom Poster Boy". Wired, January 2006.
