Scott Banister
| Scott Banister | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1975 (age 40–41) Kansas City, Missouri |
| Residence | Half Moon Bay, California |
| Alma mater | University Of Illinois at Urbana Champaign |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, investor |
| Known for | Co-founder of IronPort |
| Spouse(s) | Cyan Banister |
Scott Banister (born 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri) is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of IronPort and an early advisor and board member at PayPal.
Life and career
In the summer of 1995, Banister cofounded SponsorNet New Media, Inc., along with fellow University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students Max Levchin and Luke Nosek.[1] Banister created the Submit It! service while in college. He left during his sophomore year in 1996 to co-found Submit It! Inc., where he served as vice president of technology.[2][3] The company's other products included ListBot and ClickTrade. Submit It! Inc. was acquired by LinkExchange in June 1998,[4] which in turn was acquired by Microsoft in November 1998.[5]
Banister then spent time working with other start-ups as board member and investor. These start-ups include eVoice, creator of the first email-enabled home voicemail service, which was acquired by AOL in 2001. He served as VP of Ideas at idealab!, where he contributed numerous innovations, including the unique bid-for-placement search engine model that powers Overture . In December 2000, with Scott Weiss, Banister co-founded IronPort, an email appliance provider that was acquired in 2007 by Cisco for US$830 million.[6][7][8]
Scott Banister is co-founder and chairman of Zivity, an adult-themed social networking site co-founded with his wife, Cyan Banister, and Jeffrey Wescott.[9] [10] He was an early investor in Powerset, a startup building a natural language search engine, and sits on the company's Board of Directors. He also sat on the Board of Directors for Slide, a start-up founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, acquired by Google and shut down. Other private equity investments include Uber, Zappos.com, LiveOps, Facebook, Hi5.com, Tagged.com, iLike, Causes.com, Topsy Labs, Teleport, Inc.[11] and TekTrak.[12] Banister is a marijuana rights activist and was a supporter of Republican Senator Rand Paul.[13] In 2015, Banister donated $3 million to a Super PAC supporting Paul.[14] He later switched his endorsement to Ted Cruz after Paul suspended his campaign.[15]
Banister currently lives in Half Moon Bay, California with his wife Cyan.
References
- ↑ "SponsorNet New Media". Freebase. Retrieved 2011-02-17.
- ↑ "Bios". Submit It!, Inc. Archived from the original on January 21, 1998. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
- ↑ "Scott Banister". LinkedIn. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
VP Technology, Co-Founder: Submit It!
- ↑ "LinkExchange Acquires Submit It!". ClickZ. June 24, 1998.
- ↑ "Acquisition Enables MSN to Reach More Customers". Microsoft News Center. November 5, 1998.
- ↑ "Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire IronPort". News release. Cisco. January 4, 2007. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
- ↑ Keith Regan (January 4, 2007). "Cisco buys IronPort for $830 Million". E-Commerce Times. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
- ↑ "Cisco launches Self-Defending Network v3.0". News release. Cisco Systems. June 25, 2007. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
- ↑ "Scott Banister, Chairman, talks about Zivity on Fox Business". YouTube. November 8, 2007.
- ↑ "Zivity's Scott Banister on Fox Business Network". Zivity. November 8, 2007. Archived from the original on November 18, 2007.
- ↑ "Scott and Cyan Banister". angel.co. Retrieved 2016-08-05.
- ↑ "iPhone Tracking Service Provider TekTrak Locates Seed Funding". TechCrunch. December 14, 2010. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
- ↑ "Silicon Valley's Libertarian revolution". Politico. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
- ↑ "Million-Dollar Donors in the 2016 Presidential Race". New York Times. 25 August 2015. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ↑ http://rare.us/story/this-top-rand-paul-donor-just-made-a-big-endorsement-in-the-presidential-race/