Auren Hoffman

Auren is CEO of Rapleaf -- portable ratings for buyers and sellers. He was formerly Chair of Stonebrick Group and the Connector Group. Previously, he founded and sold three Internet companies before age 30: BridgePath (sold in 2002), Kyber Systems (sold in 1997), and GetRelevant (sold in 2002). Auren is a trustee of the Junior State of America Foundation and Chairman of Lead21. He is the founder of the Silicon Forum. Auren holds a B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the UC Berkeley. He writes a widely read blog called Summation (www.summation.net).

Recent Posts

Why big high tech companies are losing the talent war

[Disclosure: Auren works at Rapleaf, a startup, and is thus biased towards startups.]

Big companies are losing their “A” players and they’re struggling to attract “B” players. In an industry where everything is about people, large tech companies are in trouble because they are losing the… Continue Reading

Why I hate Evite

(Editor’s note: This one resonated with us. And since Auren’s pieces so far have been well liked, we’re going with it. Take note that Auren is an investor in new Evite competitor, Socializr.)

Like some of you, I get a lot of Evites. In fact, too… Continue Reading

The oncoming video ads movement

(Editor’s note: Back by popular demand is Auren Hoffman, whose last post about the Black Hat Tax has been the favorite among all the contributors so far at SiliconBeat/VentureBeat. This time Auren, who runs a comany called Rapleaf, writes about video ads.)

Web video ads are… Continue Reading

The Black Hat Tax on consumer Internet businesses

(Editors note: Auren Hoffman, who runs a Silicon Valleys start-up called RapLeaf, writes below about the Black Hat Tax on consumer Internet businesses. It is timely, because spam is as bad as ever. Yesterday, it emerged that Comcast even blacklisted the innocent email group called… Continue Reading