Brian Alvey (born March 6, 1970 in

Falls Church, Virginia Falls Church is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 14,658. Falls Church is included in the Wash ...

) is an American

serial 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 ...

, programmer, designer and blogger. He grew up in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

and now lives in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

where he is the CEO of Clipisode. He is best known for co-founding the blog publishing company Weblogs, Inc. with

Jason Calacanis Jason McCabe Calacanis (born November 28, 1970) is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster. His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York. His second venture, Weblogs, Inc., a publishing company tha ...

Early career

Alvey designed the first

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...

website in 1995 and was the senior technical member of the in-house team that built the first

BusinessWeek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

site later that year. He continued designing and developing database-driven Web applications for companies including BusinessWeek,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

JD Edwards J.D. Edwards World Solution Company or JD Edwards, abbreviated JDE, was an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software company, whose namesake ERP system is still sold under ownership by Oracle Corporation. JDE's products included World for IB ...

Deloitte & Touche Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of profession ...

and The

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...

Companies. His Tech-Engine career center application has powered over 200 online career centers including XML.com,

Computer User A user is a person who utilizes a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Other terms for username include login name, screenname (or screen name), acco ...

O'Reilly & Associates O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of a ...

Network, DevShed, and the Cold Fusion Developer's Journal. He has been the art director of three print magazines and the Chief Technology Officer of

Rising Tide Studios Jason McCabe Calacanis (born November 28, 1970) is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster. His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York. His second venture, Weblogs, Inc., a publishing company tha ...

where he personally developed The Venture Reporter Network. Alvey has also built publishing systems for sites designed by

Jeffrey Zeldman Jeffrey Zeldman is an American entrepreneur, web designer, author, podcaster and speaker on web design. He is the co-founder of A List Apart Magazine and the Web Standards Project. He also founded the design studios Happy Cog and studio.zeldman, ...

including the Web design magazine ''

A List Apart ''A List Apart'' is a webzine that explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices. History ''A List Apart'' began in 1997 as a mailing list for web designers, moderated and ...

'' (in 1998) and the

Kansas City Chiefs The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The tea ...

. He was the architect of the system that powers the redesigned global network of

Capgemini Capgemini SE is a multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company, headquartered in Paris, France. History Capgemini was founded by Serge Kampf in 1967 as an enterprise management and data processing company. The comp ...

websites. In 2002, Brian Alvey was the creator and co-host of the Meet The Makers conference, a series of talk show-style events with

. In 2003 he invented and launched Blogstakes, a sweepstakes application for the blogging community. He was an early investor and chairman of the comic book publishing company ComicMix, which he still advises.

Weblogs, Inc./Blogsmith

On September 23, 2003, Alvey, along with

and supported by an

angel investment An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

from

Mark Cuban Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...

, co-founded the publishing company Weblogs, Inc. Weblogs, Inc. was home to such blogs as

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editori ...

Autoblog A spam blog, also known as an auto blog or the neologism splog, is a blog which the author uses to promote affiliated websites, to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites or to simply sell links/ads. The purpose of a splog can be ...

, and

Joystiq ''Joystiq'' was a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 as part of the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs, now owned by AOL. It was AOL's primary video game blog, with sister blogs dealing with MMORPG gaming in general and the popular MMORPG ''W ...

. Time Warner's

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

purchased Weblogs, Inc. in October 2005 for $25–30 million. While at AOL, Alvey was named the chief architect of

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

and lead the development team which turned it into a social news aggregator. In November 2006, AOL also purchased the blogging platform Blogsmith, which Alvey had built to power Weblogs, Inc., for a reported $5 million. At one time, Blogsmith powered 14 of the top 100 blogs.

Crowd Fusion/Ceros

After AOL, Alvey founded

Crowd Fusion Ceros is a cloud-based platform encompassing a collaborative, real-time digital canvas, upon which designers create animated, interactive content without the need for developers. The published content works across desktop and mobile devices and c ...

, a cloud-native

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

(CMS) company. In July 2008, Crowd Fusion raised $3 million from Velocity Interactive Group,

Greycroft Partners Greycroft is an American venture capital firm. It manages over $2 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird, Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo. Greycroft was founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Dana Set ...

, Marc Andreessen and

Ben Horowitz Benjamin Abraham Horowitz (born June 13, 1966) is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder along with Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He previously c ...

. Crowd Fusion's platform customers have included

TMZ TMZ is a tabloid news website owned by Fox Corporation. It made its debut on November 8, 2005, originally as a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. On September 13, 202 ...

, '' The Daily'', MySpace, ''

Essence Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...

'', Tecca and ''

Extra Extra or Xtra may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film * ''The Extra'' (1962 film), a Mexican film * ''The Extra'' (2005 film), an Australian film Literature * ''Extra'' (newspaper), a Brazilian newspaper * ''Extra!'', an American me ...

''. In June 2012, Crowd Fusion acquired London-based Ceros. Ceros was spun out of Group FMG, a marketing services company based in London and New York. With that deal Crowd Fusion changed its name to

Ceros Ceros is a cloud-based platform encompassing a collaborative, real-time digital canvas, upon which designers create animated, interactive content without the need for developers. The published content works across desktop and mobile devices and c ...

and appointed Ceros CEO Simon Berg as its CEO. Alvey is currently a board advisor and Chief Scientist of Ceros.

Recurrency

Alvey's startup Recurrency was one of seven companies in the Winter 2014/2015 LAUNCH Incubator. Recurrency debuted at the 2015 LAUNCH Conference on March 2 at the

Fort Mason Center Fort Mason, in San Francisco, California originated as a coastal defense site during the American Civil War. The nucleus of the property was owned by John C. Frémont and disputes over compensation by the United States continued into 1968. In 188 ...

in San Francisco and on March 4 won Best Incubator Company.

Clipisode

In 2016, Recurrency again joined the LAUNCH Incubator and pivoted into Clipisode. Clipisode, an app for hosting a 5-minute daily talk show featuring friends and fans, was announced on stage at the 2016 LAUNCH Conference.

References

External links

Brian Alvey's blogBrian Alvey on This Week in Startups (TWiST)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alvey, Brian American male bloggers American bloggers Weblogs, Inc. 1970 births Living people People from Falls Church, Virginia American technology company founders Xaverian High School alumni Journalists from Virginia 21st-century American non-fiction writers