Michael Pousti

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Michael C. Pousti is an American businessman. Pousti currently is chairman and chief executive officer of SMS.ac, a mobile social data-communication company with more than 40 million members.^[1] SMS.ac claims to be adding as many as 750,000 customers each month. Clients must agree to watch one daily advertisement sent to their phone and pay for message units. Cellular customers get the monthly bill, which averages about US$ per month, on their cell phone statements, and their wireless carriers get a portion of SMS.ac's revenue.^[2]

Prior to SMS.ac, Pousti co-founded CollegeClub.com in 1993, and served as chairman and chief executive officer.^[3] Collegeclub.com was acquired in 2000. Pousti also served as co-founder and chief executive officer of Productivity Solutions Corporation, a client/server transactional software company that he led from concept to acquisition by Unisys.

In his final year as a computer engineering student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Pousti founded Higher Educational Resources, Inc., a software company that developed search engine technology to help students locate financial aid. At the age of 22, Pousti employed 170 people and his corporation became the first company to successfully commercialize searching on the Internet (then called the Arpanet).^{[citation needed]}