David Bohnett
| David C. Bohnett | |
|---|---|
Bohnett in 2011
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| Born |
April 2, 1956 (age 61) Chicago, Illinois |
| Alma mater |
University of Southern California Ross School of Business (MBA) |
| Occupation | Philanthropist Technology entrepreneur Technology investor |
| Known for |
David Bohnett Foundation GeoCities Baroda Ventures |
David C. Bohnett (born April 2, 1956) is an American philanthropist and technology entrepreneur. He is the founder and chairman of the David Bohnett Foundation, a non-profit, grant-making organization devoted to improving society through social activism.
Bohnett founded the pioneering social networking site GeoCities in 1994; the highly successful site went public via an IPO in 1998, and was acquired by Yahoo! in 1999. Bohnett currently invests in technology start-ups via Baroda Ventures, a Los Angeles–based venture capital firm he started in 1998.
Bohnett was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1956, and grew up in Hinsdale, an affluent Chicago suburb, with Republican parents. His father was a business executive and his mother was a preschool teacher. His sister Wendy Bohnett Campbell is a past president of the board of the Dayton Philharmonic, and his brother William is a retired corporate attorney and on the national board of the Smithsonian Institution.
Bohnett was interested in business at an early age, selling Amway products and delivering newspapers. In high school he became fascinated by computers, and chose to attend college at the University of Southern California – where he received a BS in business administration – because it was one of the few universities at the time with a computer science program. He put himself through college by waiting tables and other service jobs.
In his youth Bohnett experienced the isolation and pain of being gay, first in his conservative suburban hometown, and then in 1978 in college when his first lover, from a small-town Indiana Catholic family, committed suicide. Bohnett became active in gay rights at graduate school at the University of Michigan, beginning in the fall of 1978 as a hotline counselor at the Jim Toy–founded University of Michigan Lesbian and Gay Male Program Office, now called the Spectrum Center. As an openly gay MBA student, he volunteered to go to freshman psychology classes and, looking like an average Midwesterner, said to the students, "I'm gay, ask me anything." He received his MBA in finance from University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in 1980.
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