Amit Kapur (entrepreneur)

Amit Kapur is an American-born internet entrepreneur. He is best known as co-founder of technology start-up Gravity[1] and as the former chief operating officer at MySpace.[2]

Early life and education

Amit grew up in a small farm town in South Dakota. He then graduated with a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Career

After graduation, Kapur worked at NBC Universal in their planning and digita strategy department.[3] Kapur joined MySpace in 2005 and was in charge of the development of MySpace Music and MySpace mobile. He was named chief operating officer of the company in January 2008.[4] In 2009, Kapur along with 2 other MySpace employees, Jim Benedetto and Steve Pearman, left the company[5] to found Santa Monica-based Gravity.[6] They raised $10 million in Series A funding in May 2009[7] and another $10.6 million in Series B funding in October 2012.[8]

Gravity was acquired by AOL in January 2014.[9][10] Since then Kapur has been in charge of AOL publisher platform.[11]

References

  1. "Is Myspace Destined to Fail (Again)?". LA Weekly By Ben Westhoff May 1, 2014
  2. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. (23 August 2008). Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. pp. 21–. ISSN 0006-2510.
  3. "From Myspace’s Ashes, Silicon Start-Ups Rise". New York Times. By EILENE ZIMMERMANSEPT. 7, 2013
  4. "MySpace Names Amit Kapur Chief Operating Officer". BusinessWire. January 30, 2008.
  5. Kee, Tameka (March 3, 2009). "MySpace COO Amit Kapur Leaving With Two Other Execs For Startup". GigaOM.
  6. "Our Team". Gravity.
  7. Arrington, Michael (May 20, 2009). "Former MySpace Execs Get Funding For New Venture; Some Details Leak". TechCrunch.
  8. Yeung, Ken (October 2, 2012). "Gravity to improve its personalization platform engine with new Series B funding". The Next Web.
  9. Swisher, Kara (January 23, 2014). "AOL Buys Personalization Startup Gravity for 90 Million in Cash". Re/Code.
  10. "Tech guru | Amit Kapur". New Indian Express. By Adarsh Matham 1 February 2015
  11. "Los Angeles: Dawn of a Startup Town". Techli. Lee Schneider February 11, 2015
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