James Altucher

James Altucher
James Altucher
Born	(1968-01-23) January 23, 1968
Residence	New York, New York
Education	Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University
Known for	Entrepreneur, Blogging

James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and podcaster.^[1] He has founded or cofounded over 20 companies, including Reset Inc. and StockPickr and claims to have failed at 17 of them.^[2][3][4] He has published 11 books, and is a frequent contributor to publications including The Financial Times, TheStreet.com, TechCrunch, Seeking Alpha, Thought Catalog, and The Huffington Post.^[5][6][7] USA Today named his book "Choose Yourself" among the 12 Best Business Books of All Time.^[8]

Career

Altucher attended Cornell University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in computer science in 1989.^[1][5][9] He later attended Carnegie Mellon University as a doctoral candidate in the same discipline.^[10][11] Altucher's first job after graduating was with HBO, in their IT department. At one point, Altucher hosted an HBO program, III:am, where he roamed the streets of New York late at night interviewing residents of the city.^[1][6]

Altucher's entrepreneurial career began in 1996 when he founded Reset Inc., a website design firm, while still working for HBO.^[12] His clients included Wu Tang Clan, American Express, Con Edison, Time Warner, and BMG.^[5][12]

In 1998, Altucher left HBO and sold Reset Inc. for approximately $10 million, and used the proceeds to fund his new internet investments.^[2][3] According to Altucher, he began this period with $15 million in the bank and within two years had lost it all, which led him to reevaluate his approach to business and to life.^[2] During this time, Jim Cramer of TheStreet.com hired him to write about stocks and Altucher began trading for hedge funds.^[1]

From 2002–2005 he traded for several hedge funds and from 2004–2006, ran a fund of hedge funds.^[1][13][14] Currently, Altucher is Managing Director of Formula Capital, an asset management firm.^[15]

StockPickr

In 2006 Altucher founded the financial social network StockPickr.^[16][17] The website is a community based trading website which offers stock picks from amateur investors, a discussion forum, a stock market blog and thousands of professional stock portfolios.^[18][19] The website was named among Time Magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2007, and sold to TheStreet.com the same year for $10 million.^[20][21][22]

Investments

Currently, he serves as Managing Director of Formula Capital.^[23] He was a seed investor in Buddy Media, which later sold to Salesforce.com for $745 million.^[1][24] Altucher also has investments in bit.ly,^[5] Ticketfly, CTera, Acebucks, Cancer Genetics, Optimal (where he is a board member),^[25] and several other companies.^[26] Altucher has previously held positions in companies such as 212 Ventures^[11] and Corporate Resource Services Inc, as well as Stockpickr LLC and Vaultus Mobile, both of which he founded.^[10][11]

Media

He was a weekly columnist from 2004–2009 for The Financial Times,^[27] and wrote articles for The Street.com,^[28] Seeking Alpha,^[29] and Daily Finance.^[30] He frequently appears on CNBC,^[31] and has written several books on investing. Altucher is a frequent guest contributor to The Daily Ticker feature on Yahoo! Finance & TechCrunch.

Podcast

Altucher currently has two podcasts that are very often present at the top of the iTunes charts, peaking all the way at number one. On his main, weekly podcast, The James Altucher Show, he interviews entrepreneurs, public figures, comedians, and much more. His guests have included, Mark Cuban, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Wayne Dyer, Adam Carolla, and Tim Ferriss.^[32]

In April 2014, Altucher began his daily podcast, Ask Altucher, in which he takes listeners questions and gives his answers.

Author

Altucher has written 11 books, both self and big six published.^[33] Altucher's 2011 book, I Was Blind But Now I See, reached No. 1 in Amazon.com's motivational books section for 2011.^[1] Altucher's writing appears in such publications as the Financial Times,^[10] Wall Street Journal, TheStreet.com, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, ThoughtCatalog, and Fidelity.com.^[11][34] He has appeared on CNBC, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Bloomberg TV, and CNN Radio.^[11][35]

Altucher launched his blog, Altucher Confidential, in October 2010. In the first year, the blog had over 5 million page views.^[36] Altucher's 2013 book Choose Yourself, debuted on the Wall Street Journal Bestselling-Books list.^[7]

USA Today also named "Choose Yourself" among the 12 Best Business Books of All Time.^[8]

Publications

• Trade Like a Hedge Fund. John Wiley and Sons. 2004. ISBN 978-0-471-48485-1. 
• Trade like Warren Buffett. John Wiley and Sons. 2005. ISBN 978-0-471-65584-8. 
• SuperCash. John Wiley and Sons. 2006. ISBN 978-0-471-74599-0. 
• The Forever Portfolio: How to Pick Stocks That You Can Hold for the Long Run. Penguin Group. 2008. ISBN 978-1-59184-211-8. 
• The Wall Street Journal Guide to Investing in the Apocalypse: Make Money by Seeing Opportunity Where Others See Peril. HarperCollins. 2011. ISBN 978-0-06-200132-0. 
• I Was Blind But Now I See. CreateSpace. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4663-4795-3. 
• How To Be The Luckiest Person Alive!. CreateSpace. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4611-2070-4. 
• Choose Yourself. CreateSpace. 2013. ISBN 978-1-4903-1337-5. 
• The Power of No. Hay House, Inc. 2014. ISBN 978-1-4019-4587-9. 

References

External references

• James Altucher's personal blog
• James Altucher's articles at Techcrunch
• James Altucher's articles at The Huffington Post