Jason McCabe Calacanis (born November 28, 1970
[1] in Brooklyn,
New York) is an Greek-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.
Rising Tide Studios
A native of Brooklyn, with Greek and Irish origins, 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 [1].
His company, Rising Tide Studios, also hosted conferences and became known for
its lavish parties[citation needed]. 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[citation needed] in the blogging community include
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[citation needed].
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[citation needed].
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. Calacanis started by hiring a team of eight "anchors" to follow up to users
top stories. He then hired some of the top users of social bookmarking sites like
Digg, Reddit, Newsvine and
Flickr to go to Netscape as Netscape Navigators [2], which prompted a public debate with Kevin Rose, founder of
Digg.
On November 16, 2006, TechCrunch[3] 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.
Sequoia Capital
On December 5,2006, Techcrunch[4] 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.
Mahalo.com
Calacanis founded Mahalo.com, a "human-powered search engine" [3], which launched in alpha test in May 2007. During a speech about the site at the
Gnomedex conference in August 2007, Calacanis got into a public confrontation with
Dave Winer that led to Winer's resignation from the panel of experts for the TechCrunch20
conference organized by Calacanis. Winer interrupted Calacanis' speech during the event, calling it "conference spam" and
igniting a war of words on their blogs. "I'm not interested in having someone berate me like this," Calacanis wrote on his blog.
[4]
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.
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.
References
- ^ "My retirement party.", The Jason Calacanis Weblog, 28 November, 2005. Retrieved on
2006-04-21.
- ^ Silicon Alley Reporter Goes Under, ClickZ, News, October 8, 2001
- ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118056234795419124.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
- ^ Gnomedex Aftermath: Dave Winer Dropped From TechCrunch20. Wired News
(2007-08-14). Retrieved on 2007-08-15.
External links
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