Rob Wrubel

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Rob Wrubel is a serial entrepreneur and former CEO of Ask Jeeves. He currently serves as CEO of Aptimus, Inc.

Aptimus, based in San Francisco, CA, is a Point-of-Action online advertising network that reaches engaged users by placing offers in the transactional areas of Web sites they trust. The network consists of ten targeted channels that reach over 10 million consumers each month. Aptimus' uadvertising network delivers qualified customer leads through presenting offers at the points of download, log-in, registration, and other active locations across a diverse set of major publishers such as AOL, Tickle, DriverGuide, PictureTrail. The company's proprietary optimization technology presents advertisers' offers on the Web sites where they reach consumers, automatically targeting based on prior consumer response in each location and each individual consumer's demographics.

Wrubel is also the co-founder and former co-CEO of Whole Body / Yoga Works based in Santa Monica, CA. Yoga Works is the largest operator of Yoga and alternative fitness studios in the Los Angeles county. Yoga Works operates 14 studios located in Los Angeles, Orange County, and New York City. The company provides over 1000 classes a week in yoga and other forms of alternative fitness including pilates & meditation. The company also provides professional training programs, workshops, retreats, corporate on-site Yoga and retail product merchandising. Whole Body's plan is to become the leading lifestyle brand and provider of mind-body fitness services in the country.

From June 2001 to July 2002, Wrubel was an Entrepreneur-in-residence at Highland Capital Partners where he developed new business concepts for venture funding.

Before that, Wrubel was the Chief Executive Officer of Ask Jeeves from 1998 to 2001. He grew the company from a 15-employee start-up to a public-market software and services company with $100 million in sales and among the most successful start-ups of the Internet economy. Wrubel created one of the first enduring brands on the Internet^{[citation needed]}, providing consumers new to the Internet an easy way to find what they were looking for on the Web. He raised over $300 million in financing, establishing Ask Jeeves joint venture in three continents. The company was most recently sold to Barry Diller's IAC for $1.95 billion.

From 1993 to 1998, Wrubel was the Chief Operating Officer of Knowledge Adventure, Inc., the country's largest educational software company. Wrubel was one of the founding team who helped develop and launch the nation's most popular educational software products including JumpStart Software. Wrubel helped grow Knowledge Adventure from a start-up of 20 people with a few hundred thousand in sales to a $250 million in sales software company in five years. Knowledge Adventure was first sold to Cendant and then eventually acquired by Vivendi for $850 million in 1999.

Before Knowledge Adventure, Wrubel was the Assistant Managing Editor of Financial World Magazine in New York where he wrote nationally recognized articles and features on business and industry trends.

Wrubel spent his first professional year out of college on Wall Street, helping develop mergers and acquisition analysis to interest-rate swap derivative financial instruments.

Rob obtained a Bachelor of Arts in History and Economics from Yale University in 1983.

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