Jason Goldberg (entrepreneur)
Jason Goldberg is an American internet entrepreneur. He is currently the Director and CEO of Simple Token[1] and CEO of Pepo.[2] Prior to this, he served as the Cofounder and CEO of e-commerce sites Fab[3] and Hem.[4]
Jason Goldberg | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Entrepreneur |
Spouse(s) | Christian Friedhelm Schoenherr (m. 2012) |
Early life and education
Goldberg is from Rockville, Maryland.[5] He graduated from Emory University in 1993.[5] In 2001, he received an MBA from Stanford Business School.[6]
Career
Goldberg left Emory University to work for the White House in the Cabinet Affairs office before pivoting to work for Erskine Bowles, President Clinton’s chief of staff.[6] He then left politics for technology, developing digital strategies for AOL Time Warner and T-Mobile.[6] In 2004, he founded Jobster, a job search engine that pivoted into a site to manage employee referrals.[7] The site was a rival to LinkedIn.[8] The company went through two "pivots" and was sold in 2006 for a fraction of its former value.[9]
Goldberg launched Socialmedian in 2008, a social news aggregator, which he later sold to XING.[6][7]
In 2011, he launched Fabulis, a gay social network with Bradford Shellhammer.[9] Soon after, he pivoted the business to become a flash-sale furniture site and changed the name to Fab.[9] Its focus was to aggregate designer products into one online marketplace.[7]
In 2014, Goldberg launched Hem, a furniture manufacturing company that doubles as an e-commerce site.[10]
In 2016, Goldberg launched Pepo, a social media app that connects users with experts in live messaging communities on various topics.[11][12]
In 2017, Goldberg created Simple Token to bridge crypto-currencies and mainstream consumer apps. Simple Token is a blockchain protocol for consumer companies to easily launch their own tokens, without the need to create and maintain new blockchains and token ecosystems. Goldberg came up with the idea for Simple Token when attempting to tokenize his social media app, Pepo. Pepo's development team found that the tokenization process was much more costly and complex than they had anticipated. From this, Goldberg began creating a technology that allows small to mid-size consumer companies to put part of their business onto a blockchain and tokenize without complex development requirements. Simple Token will launch a public token sale on November 14, 2017.[1]
Personal life
In August 2012, Goldberg married his boyfriend Christian Friedhelm Schoenherr in New York.[13] Goldberg and Shellhammer are close friends and served as each other's best man at their weddings.[14]
References
- "Simple Tokens Aims To Keep Tokening Simple - ICO Soon - BlockTribune". 2 October 2017.
- "Former Fab CEO Jason Goldberg's new company Pepo has raised $2.3 million in funding".
- "Fab Team". Fab. Archived from the original on January 8, 2015. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- "Hem Contact". Hem. Archived from the original on January 9, 2015. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- "Making Everyone More "Fabulis"". Mark’s List. Archived from the original on October 18, 2012. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- "The Former White House Aide Who Founded Fab Dot Com". BusinessWeek. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- "How High Can Fab Climb?". FastCompany. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- "Demolition Man: why does Fab's CEO keep building big companies that suddenly implode?". The Verge. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- "Fab CEO Has A Long History Of Mistakes". Business Insider. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- "Fab's CEO, Still Standing, Is Plotting the Next 20 Years". Re/Code. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- Lunden, Ingrid. "Pepo, Jason Goldberg's social media app, raises $2.35M from his old Fab.com backers".
- Loizos, Connie. "Jason Goldberg raises $400K more to turn Pepo into 'the best place to host live conversation'".
- "Christian Schoenherr, Jason Goldberg". New York Times.
- Konrad, Alex (2013-11-01). "Fab.com Co-Founder Departs After Pivot From Flash Sales Model". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-07-30.