Rafe Furst
| Rafe Furst | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Los Angeles, CA |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Website | http://www.rafefurst.com/ |
Rafe Furst is an entrepreneur, impact investor, writer, producer and poker player. He is Co-Founder of Crowdfunder and advises many projects that involve technology and social entrepreneurship. Furst has spoken about transformation of early-stage finance at TED, and in 2006, he won a World Series of Poker Championship Bracelet. A 2011 book titled, Shake the World featuring Furst along with other business and non-profit leaders, described him as a "twenty-first century polymath."
Furst holds an M.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Symbolic Systems, both from Stanford University.
Furst began his career as an artificial intelligence researcher at the Kestrel Institute. Furst left academia to co-found his first company, Pick'em Sports, in 1996, which was sold to a public company in 1999.
After the success of Pick'em Sports, Furst helped launch and run several other ventures, including Expert Insight, an instructional media company which won several awards but was ultimately unsuccessful in the marketplace.
Furst has invested in, mentored, and advised many well known startups and social enterprises, including Mobotory, Skillshare and HUB LA.
In 2011, after his investment in the early crowdfunding platform ProFounder closed its doors, Furst joined up with fellow Los Angeles entrepreneur Chance Barnett to launch Crowdfunder, where Furst is the SVP of Business Development.
Furst served on the Board of Directors at the Prevent Cancer Foundation and Conrad Foundation; the Board of Advisors at Decision Education Foundation and Unreasonable Institute and has served as a Mentor at Sandbox, StartingBloc, and Thiel Fellowship.
In 2003, Furst and his friend Phil Gordon launched the Bad Beat on Cancer initiative which encourages poker players to pledge 1% of their winnings to prevent cancer. Since inception, Bad Beat on Cancer has raised over $3.8 million. In 2007, Furst received the award for Excellence in Cancer Awareness, and in March 2010, Furst received the 2nd Annual Cancer Champion Award.
Furst teamed up with his friend Kim Scheinberg in 2010 to launch Presumed Abundance a new type of venture philanthropy fund which holds its profits in trust for the social entrepreneurs it has funded, in order that they may later "fund it forward."
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