| Nova Spivack | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 5, 1969 Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, author |
| Partner | Kimberly Rubin |
| Parents | Mayer Spivack, Kathleen Spivack |
Nova Spivack (born June 5, 1969) is a technology entrepreneur named as one of the top thought-leaders on the future of the Web.[1]
Spivack is presently CEO of Bottlenose, a new realtime personalization startup. He is also a co-founder and investor in several other ventures, including Live Matrix, which is making a guide to scheduled events on the Web, The Daily Dot which is making a new online newspaper for consumers, and StreamGlider which is making a new mobile media dashboard. He is also the first outside investor in Klout, which provides social analytics for Twitter and Facebook. Spivack was founder and Chief Executive Officer of Radar Networks, the makers of Twine.com (acquired by Evri Inc. in 2010) and is considered a leading pioneer in semantic web technology.[2][3][4]
In 1994 he co-founded EarthWeb, Inc., one of the first Internet companies. He founded Lucid Ventures in 2001 and the semantic web venture Radar Networks in 2003.[5]
Nova Spivack writes about the future of the Internet and topics concerning Semantic Web technology and Web applications.[6][7]
Nova Spivack is the grandson of Peter F. Drucker, widely considered "the father of modern management.” He is married to Kimberly Rubin-Spivack. His mother is the Boston poet and writer, Kathleen Spivack, and his father, Mayer Spivack, was a consultant on organizational behavior, innovation, and learning, as well as an artist. His brother, Marin Spivack is a Jazz musician and tai chi teacher.
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Nova Spivack was born in Boston and grew up in Watertown, Massachusetts. He was admitted early to the University of Massachusetts Boston and attended while still in high school. In 1989 he attended MIT and took part in a study of parallel computing techniques for research on chaos- and complexity theory. He studied philosophy at Oberlin College with focus on artificial intelligence and cognitive science; graduating with a B.A. degree in 1991. In 1992 Spivack received an invitation to attend a business school program at the International Space University and earned a CSS graduate-level professional degree in Space Life Sciences. His studies were funded by NASA and the ESA.[8] He later trained with the Russian Air Force in reduced-gravity parabolic flight and flew to edge of space with Space Adventures in 1999.[9]
Spivack writes about the future of the Internet;[7] often the Semantic Web, artificial intelligence and search engine technology.[6] He blogs on Minding the Planet and frequently publishes on other websites. An article of note was published on TechCrunch in March 2009; about the technology behind Wolfram/Alpha, a knowledge engine, unreleased at the time, created by computer scientist Stephen Wolfram. The article generated excitement among Web users[10] and attracted dozens of citations and interview requests from high-profile websites such as ABC News, Newsweek, CNN and the New York Times. At the Semantic Technology Conference on June 17, 2009, Spivack led a discussion about Wolfram|Alpha with Russell Foltz-Smith from Wolfram Research (transcript).
In the late 1980s Spivack developed software for Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and later at Thinking Machines. Early 1993 Spivack worked at Individual, Inc., a venture that developed intelligent software to filter news sources.[8]
In 1994 Nova Spivack co-founded the IT information provider website EarthWeb, Inc..[9] and subsequently served as Executive Vice-President for Products, Strategy and Marketing. EarthWeb's initial public offering on November 11, 1998 closed at US$48.69 per share, up 247.8% from its opening price of $14[11] At the time, EarthWeb's first-day return was among the largest in NASDAQ history and helped recapture a dwindling[12] investor interest in new equity offerings of Internet-based companies.[11][13][14][15] At EarthWeb Spivack helped establishments launch their first large-scale Web operations; among those are some of note: AT&T, Sony and the New York Stock Exchange.[9] Following the dot-com crash EarthWeb ran into difficulty and in 2000 its content properties were acquired by Internet.com. EarthWeb's property Dice.com remained a stand-alone business until it was acquired for approximately US$200 million in 2005, followed by a NASDAQ initial public offering in 2007.
In 1999 to 2000, Spivack helped co-found and build nVention Convergence Ventures; an in-house intellectual property incubator of SRI International and Sarnoff Laboratories. While working at nVention Spivack founded two companies of his own; business incubator Lucid Ventures in 2001 and technology venture Radar Networks in 2003. The technology developed by Radar Networks was based on Semantic Web systems that Spivack worked on in CALO,[16] a SRI project funded by DARPA. In April 2006 Spivack raised initial outside venture funding for Radar Networks.[17] They introduced their first commercial product in 2008, Twine; a Semantic Web based tool for information storage, authoring and discovery.[18] Twine combined features of forums, wikis, online databases and newsgroups. Data categorization and keyword-association (tagging) were automated by artificial intelligence developed by Radar Networks.[19][20] Information from the Wikipedia was automatically mined to expand its knowledge base.[20] Close to 30,000 people signed up for early access while Twine was in private beta.[21][22] Upon opening the service to the public, user traffic increased 40% each month from October 2008 to June 2009, peaking at an 80% increase in February. The company stated that user growth reached 3 million monthly visitors, 300,000 registered users, and approximately 5 million pieces of user-contributed content at its peak. User traffic statistics mirror early development of Wikipedia.[23] Twine was acquired by Evri, a venture owned by Paul Allen, in March 2010, before T2 was launched. [24]
In 2010, Spivack announced a new venture, Live Matrix, in partnership with Sanjay Reddy (formerly SVP of Gemstar TV Guide), which aims to provide a unified Web-based guide to all scheduled content and events taking place on the Internet.[25]
Spivack was also the first investor in, Klout.com, the leading service measuring influence.[26]
In 2011, Spivack announced that he is working on several new ventures (presently in stealth mode), including The Daily Dot, Bottlenose, and StreamGlider.[27] [28] [29]