Marc Armand Rousso is a French businessman, and the founder of Accoona.com, a business-to-business search engine, and X3D Technology. He is the father of

Vanessa Rousso Vanessa Ashley Rousso (born February 5, 1983) is a French-American attorney and professional poker player, DJ, and television personality. Born in White Plains, New York, Rousso holds dual citizenship with the United States and France. Rousso ...

, professional

poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

player and Big Brother contestant.

Biography

Rousso settled in the United States in 1982, working as a trader of stamps. In 1985 he stated he bartered $45 million (catalog value) in rare

postage stamps A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the fa ...

. In 1986, when the Internet was a little known entity, Rousso started an online stamp exchange website, The International Stamp Exchange, which lasted until 1990. The International Stamp Exchange was part of a network run by David N. Glassman who created NaicoNet, the first online retail online stock trading system. Rousso thought online advertising revenues could be lucrative enough to make a business dedicated to philatelists profitable. Rousso and the ISE are profiled in the March 28, 1988 issue of

New York Magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'', ...

. Rousso was identified as having bought, at a 2010 auction, the

Treskilling Yellow The "Treskilling" Yellow, or three schilling banco error of color ( sv, Gul tre skilling banco, literally "yellow three skilling banco"), is a Swedish postage stamp of which only one example is known to exist. This stamp was cancelled at Nya Kopp ...

, a unique Swedish postage stamp printed in the wrong color. The stamp had been auctioned on 22 May 2010, by David Feldman in Geneva, Switzerland, for at least $2.3 million, the world's record price for a stamp at auction. In May 2013 the stamp was acquired in a private sale by Count Gustaf Douglas, a Swedish nobleman and politician. In January 1999 Rousso was arrested for securities fraud for defrauding millions of dollars from investors - and money laundering. Rousso ultimately came to plea agreements with the federal government after spending approximately one year in jail.

Accoona search engine

Rousso was founder of Accoona, a B2B search engine. Launched in 2004 with former President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

as chief spokesman for its launch, the company failed to gain any significant part of the search engine market, though the online electronics retailers it also owns did make the company money. Clinton reportedly made $700,000 for his Clinton Foundation in 2006 from selling Accoona stock. The initial $80.5 million offering was underwritten by Maxim Group. However, as ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reported, "Accoona.com attracted only 106,000 visitors from the United States in July (2007), according to comScore, which monitors Internet traffic." The underwriter withdrew, possibly as a result of Rousso's checkered past. In 2008, the company was acquired by

Masterseek Masterseek Corp. is a Business-to-business, B2B (business-to-business) search engine founded in Denmark in 1999. Masterseek now encompasses 175 million business profiles, 346 million websites, and 450 million contacts of which 216 million are Lin ...

Chess

Rousso is active in international chess and with his company X3D Technologies, which develops 3-D technology for the internet, sponsored several World Championship Matches, including

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by ...

Anatoly Karpov Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov ( rus, links=no, Анато́лий Евге́ньевич Ка́рпов, p=ɐnɐˈtolʲɪj jɪvˈɡʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈkarpəf; born May 23, 1951) is a Russian and former Soviet chess grandmaster, former World Ches ...

(2002) and Garry Kasparov vs

X3D Fritz X3D Fritz was a version of the Fritz chess program, which in November 2003 played a four-game human–computer chess match against world number one Grandmaster Garry Kasparov. The match was tied 2–2, with X3D Fritz winning game 2, Kasparov win ...

(2003).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rousso, Armand French businesspeople Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Stamp dealers French emigrants to the United States Chess patrons