Everything about Jason Calacanis totally explained
Jason McCabe Calacanis (born
November 28,
1970 in
Brooklyn,
New York) is a Greek-Irish 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
(External Link
).
His company,
Rising Tide Studios, also hosted conferences. It had a staff of about 70 people, including conference organizer
Xeni Jardin, who would later become a journalist and blogger at
Boing Boing. Other bloggers involved in the company include
Clay Shirky and
Tristan Louis.
With the end of the
Dot-com bubble, the company had to lay off much of its staff. 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.
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.
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
(External Link), which prompted a public debate with
Kevin Rose, founder of
Digg.
On
November 16,
2006,
TechCrunch(External Link) 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(External Link) 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", 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.
Calacanis provides "Craft Services" for the
Mahalo Daily video podcast.
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." 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.
Calacanis has been a featured guest on
This Week In Tech (TWIT), a weekly podcast hosted by
Leo Laporte.
TechCrunch40 / TechCrunch50 event
Calacanis co-founded the
TechCrunch40, later renamed
TechCrunch50, event with
Michael Arrington of
TechCrunch.
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. After Jason started Mahalo he stopped producing the podcasts.
JasonNation
In early
2008, Calacanis began streaming video from his home and office and other locations using the mobile video streaming service Qik and
Ustream.
Calacanis informs his fans when he'll be streaming live by announcing it through his
Twitter and
Pownce accounts.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Jason Calacanis'.
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