| Patrick Nagle | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 7, 1982 Towson, United States |
| Residence | Baltimore, Maryland, Maryland, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Towson University |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
Patrick Nagle (born October 7, 1982) is an Internet entrepreneur who is best known for building RateMyProfessors.com, an Internet message board that revolutionized the way students attend college.[1]
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In 2004, Patrick Nagle dropped out of Towson University after he raised $125,000 from his high school friend William DeSantis. Later that year, Nagle and DeSantis launched their first startup SwitchTextbooks.com.[2]
SwitchTextbooks.com was a way for college students to trade textbooks. At the age of 24, Nagle later raised over $1,000,000 in angel funding to buy RateMyProfessors.com from Menlo Park, California programmer John Swapceinski.[3]
SwitchTextbooks.com was abandoned due financial limitations and as a result of RateMyProfessor.com's exponential growth. Nagle and DeSantis still own the Patent to SwtchTextbooks.com: “Internet Textbook Exchange".[4]
Although undisclosed, it is rumored that the Viacom acquisition of RateMyProfessors.com in 2007 was in the low eight figures.[5] At the time of acquisition, RateMyProfessors.com reached over 10-million college students.[6]
In 2008 Patrick Nagle left Viacom's MTVu and teamed-up with Matias de Tezanos to acquire the high school equivalent of RateMyProfessors.com from Bakersfield, California based Mister Message LLC.[7] The legality of the RateMyTeachers acquisition was initially in dispute by former Mister Message, LLC associate Michael Hussey. [8] Hussey and Nagle settled out of court on November 19, 2009. [9] RateMyTeachers.com boasts over 20-million users per year.
Additionally in 2008, Nagle and Kenneth Clash acquired and re-branded NiggaSpace.com as OurSpace.com, which was visited over 7-million times.[10] OurSpace.com's mission was to become the leading online urban social network.[11] OurSpace.com was redirected to MySpace.com in 2010. Whois records report that OurSpace.com is owned by MySpace.com, LLC.[12]