Nick Grouf
| Nick Grouf | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Nicholas Allen Grouf New York, New York |
| Residence | Los Angeles, California |
| Alma mater | Yale University, Harvard Business School |
| Occupation | Investor, entrepreneur |
| Employer | Alpha Edison, Clementine Capital |
| Spouse(s) | Shana Eddy-Grouf |
Nick Grouf is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. Described as a "pioneer of the Web 1.0 generation," Grouf is the co-founder and managing director of Alpha Edison, a venture capital fund, and the founder of Clementine Capital, LLC, a technology-focused incubator.
Grouf co-founded Firefly, an outgrowth of the RINGO project at the MIT Media Lab. Firefly invented collaborative filtering and developed the first online collaborative recommendation software, and helped to define online privacy standards as a contributor to the Platform for Privacy Preferences. He later co-founded PeoplePC, which bundled personal computers with internet service and access to other discounted products and services, and Spot Runner, an internet-based platform to produce, buy, place, and distribute targeted cable TV ads. Through Clementine Capital, he has worked with startups including Lootcrate and Pluto TV, a streaming web platform.
Grouf was born and grew up in New York City. The son of Jon Grouf, a lawyer, and Dale Berger, an entrepreneur, he attended the Horace Mann School. He was interested in both music and business, and attended Yale University. He graduated with a degree in American Studies in 1990; his senior thesis, an opera, won Yale's Norman Holmes Pearson Prize.
After Yale, Grouf was accepted at the Harvard Business School. He deferred admission for three years, and instead returned to New York in September 1990, where he focused on media and technology as a business analyst at McKinsey and Company. In addition, he pursued a career as a musician, performing as a singer-songwriter. In 1993, he moved to Cambridge and enrolled at Harvard. Prior to earning his MBA in 1995, he served as an associate in Mergers & Acquisitions at Goldman Sachs.
In January 1995, Grouf met David Waxman on a flight from San Francisco to Boston. Waxman, a master's candidate at the MIT Media Lab, was also a musician. They began working together shortly after they met, and in March 1995, with MIT professor Pattie Maes, engineer Max Metral, Upendra Shardanand, and Yezdi Lashkari, Grouf and Waxman founded Firefly. Originally known as Agents, Inc., Firefly invented collaborative filtering personalization technology which could predict a user's tastes based on previously gathered preferences. First focused on music, it launched as ffly.com in October 1995 and by 1996 it had built a community of more than 3 million users. As the CEO and president of Firefly, Entertainment Weekly wrote that Grouf gave "cold artificial intelligence a warm glow."
...
Wikipedia