Jason Calacanis was born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York, to parents of Greek and Irish origin, and has two brothers.
26 Facts About Jason Calacanis
2.
Jason Calacanis started his career in the 1990s as a reporter covering the internet industry in New York.
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Jason Calacanis was founder and CEO of Rising Tide Studios, a media company that published print and online publications.
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Jason Calacanis' socializing earned him a nickname as the "yearbook editor" of the Silicon Alley community.
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Jason Calacanis organized conferences in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco focused on the Internet, web, and New Media.
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Jason Calacanis co-founded the blog network Weblogs, Inc with Brian Alvey on September 24,2003, and the startup was supported by an angel investment from Mark Cuban.
7.
On November 16,2006, TechCrunch reported that Jason Calacanis had resigned from his position as CEO of Weblogs, Inc and general manager of Netscape.
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Jason Calacanis later confirmed this on his blog and the Gillmor Gang podcast.
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Jason Calacanis joined Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm, as an EIA in December, 2006, a position which he held until May, 2007.
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In 2007, Jason Calacanis started an internet trend he called "fatblogging" after being fed up with being overweight.
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Jason Calacanis launched the web directory Mahalo, which raised $20 million in venture capital from investors including Sequoia Capital, News Corp, CBS, Mark Cuban, and Elon Musk.
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Jason Calacanis hit a peak of 15 million unique visitors a month and achieved profitability in 2011, but suffered a sharp decline in traffic that year from the Google Panda search algorithm update and shut down in 2014.
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In June 2019, Jason Calacanis partnered with the NSW Government to create the Sydney Launch Festival for startups to give their pitches to global audiences.
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In 2009, Jason Calacanis founded the Open Angel Forum, an event that connects early-stage startups with angel investors.
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The forum was the culmination of a series of public comments by Jason Calacanis questioning the ethics of pay-to-pitch angel forums.
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Jason Calacanis believes startups shouldn't have to pay to pitch angel investors, calling out fees that can range from $1,000 to $8,000 for a single 10- or 15-minute presentation.
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Jason Calacanis is an angel investor in Robinhood, Wealthfront, Uber, Desktop Metal, Datastax, Thumbtack, Superhuman and Trello.
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Jason Calacanis raised a $10 million fund for his own venture investment firm to invest in startups that emerged from the Launch conference.
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In 2016, Jason Calacanis was banned from attending Y Combinator's Demo Day by YC President, Sam Altman.
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The decision to exclude Jason Calacanis was driven by feedback received from YC founders regarding their interactions with him.
21.
Jason Calacanis publicly announced in 2018 that he had sold all of his Facebook stock, expressing sharp criticism of company CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on the Too Embarrassed to Ask podcast.
22.
In 2018, Jason Calacanis invested in Calm, a meditation app that is valued at $1 billion.
23.
Jason Calacanis found himself embroiled in controversy due to his association with Jeffrey Epstein.
24.
Jason Calacanis's name was unearthed on page 9 of Epstein's notorious black book, a revelation that provoked a public response from Calacanis on August 5,2020.
25.
Jason Calacanis stated that his connection to Epstein was established during a Ted Talk when Epstein expressed an interest in investing in Calacanis' magazine.
26.
Jason Calacanis was an early supporter and founder for the effort behind the successful recall election of former San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin.