John W. Danner (born August 18, 1966) is an American entrepreneur who founded NetGravity, Rocketship Education, Zeal Learning, and Dunce Capital. He is currently the Managing Partner of Dunce Capital, which invests in the future of learning and work. He was the Co-Founder of Rocketship Education, where he served as CEO from 2006 to 2013. He cofounded NetGravity in 1995, which was the world's first advertising server company.

Education and career

Danner received his Bachelor’s of Science in

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1988. He went on to receive his Master’s of Science from Stanford in Electrical Engineering in 1992 while working as a Software Engineer at

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

. After receiving his bachelor's degree, Danner started his career as a Software Engineer at Tandem Computers, where he remained from June 1988 to June 1990. At Tandem, he built the front-end for Tandem’s design environment as well as CAD tools used by Tandem to make new computers. Following his tenure at Tandem, Danner worked as a Software Engineer at Oracle Corporation. After Oracle, Danner went on to work at

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

, where he worked as a Software Engineer on Jim Clark's project to build the Nintendo64 and Time Warner fiber to the curb project (Full Service Network). In August 1995, Danner co-founded NetGravity, where he served as CEO until August 1999. NetGravity was the first ad server company. It made software that helped large media companies and websites manage Internet advertising. The company had an initial public offering in June 1998 and was sold to

DoubleClick DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to adv ...

in 1999 for $750 million. After the sale of NetGravity, Danner went on to continue his studies and started a Master’s of Education in Education Policy in 2001 at

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

. He finished the degree in 2002. After receiving his degree from Vanderbilt, Danner went on to work as a public school teacher in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...

from 2002 to 2005. In 2006, Danner co-founded Rocketship Education, where he served as CEO from 2005 to 2013. Rocketship combined classroom and online teaching and at the time of Danner’s departure, the company served 3,500 students across 7 schools and was the highest-performing low-income school system in California. In February 2013, Danner co-founded Zeal Learning. Zeal Learning was an online math tutoring company. By combining live coaches and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, Zeal reduced the cost of math tutoring, effectively solving Bloom's Two Sigma Problem. Danner sold Zeal in 2018 and began actively angel investing. At the end of 2018, he started a venture capital fund, Dunce Capital, focused on idea and pre-seed investments in the future of learning and work (FLW).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Danner, John Stanford University alumni 1966 births Living people Henry Crown Fellows

Education and career

See also

References