Bo Peabody (born 1971) is an

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

ist and

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

executive who co-founded

Tripod.com Tripod.com is a web hosting service owned by Lycos. Originally aiming its services to college students and young adults, it was one of several sites trying to build online communities during the 1990s. As such, Tripod formed part of the first wav ...

, one of the earliest dot-coms, in 1992. He is currently the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Seated, a dynamic pricing platform for restaurants. He is also a venture partner and

entrepreneur in residence An Entrepreneur in residence, or Executive in residence (EIR), is a position most often held by successful entrepreneurs in venture capital firms, private equity firms, startup accelerators, law firms or business schools. The EIR typically lead ...

at Greycroft Partners.

Early life and education

Peabody graduated from

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...

in 1994 and the

Academy at Charlemont The Academy at Charlemont is a small, private, college-preparatory day school, located on the Deerfield River in Charlemont, Massachusetts, that serves grade 6 through postgraduate. The school was founded by Eric Grinnell, Dianne Grinnell, David W. ...

in 1990.

Career

Tripod.com originated in 1992 with two Williams College classmates, Bo Peabody and Brett Hershey, along with

Dick Sabot Richard Sabot (February 16, 1944 – July 6, 2005) was an economist, scholar, farmer, and Internet pioneer who was co-founder of Tripod.com, one of the first and most successful dot-coms, in 1992. (It was subsequently sold to Lycos in 1998) He w ...

, an economics professor at the school. The company was headquartered in

Williamstown, Massachusetts Williamstown is a town in the northern part of Berkshire County, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, United States. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolit ...

, with Peabody as CEO. Although it would eventually focus on the internet, Tripod also published a magazine, ''Tools for Life'', that was distributed with textbooks, and offered a discount card for students.Elliott, Stuart. "Interpublic invests in an Internet provider aimed at 'the transition generation' of young adults". ''New York Times'', May 28, 1997, p. D5. The company was the eighth-largest site on the Internet when it was sold to

Lycos Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Walth ...

in 1998 for US$58 million in stock. The terms of the sale forced him to hold onto his stock for two years -- while its value increased ten-fold. After the lockup period expired, Peabody sold his shares about two months before the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

burst.Technology Brief. "Lycos Inc.: Acquisition of Tripod Inc. Expected to Be Announced". ''Wall Street Journal'', February 3, 1998, p. A6. Following the sale of Tripod.com, Peabody has gone on to found several other companies. Most notably, he co-founded Village Ventures, a venture capital firm based in

. In 1998, he co-founded Streetmail which became EverydayHealth, the largest competitor to WebMD. Later, he co-founded VoodooVox (2000) and HealthGuru (2004). Peabody is also co-owner of Mezze, Inc, a hospitality group consisting of an events business and restaurants in

Western Massachusetts Western Massachusetts, known colloquially as “Western Mass,” is a region in Massachusetts, one of the six U.S. states that make up the New England region of the United States. Western Massachusetts has diverse topography; 22 colleges and u ...

. Peabody is the author of ''Lucky or Smart'', published by

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

References

External links

Author Bio at Random HouseManaging General Partner, Village Venturesgreycroft.comtownandcountrymag.com
American venture capitalists 1971 births Living people Williams College alumni 21st-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1970s-stub