John Brown Witchel

Who is John Brown Witchel?

John Brown Witchel is currently the CTO of SendMe, a leading mobile entertainment company in San Francisco. SendMe closed access to their services in January and February of 2014. John was the founder of BookPig, a children's book rental company and served as its CEO for 10 months. John was also the co-founder of Prosper, the first P2P lending marketplace. An active software designer, Mr. Witchel was the architect and lead developer of Prosper. Prosper raised over $40M from such top venture firms as Benchmark, Accel, and Fidelity Ventures. Mr. Witchel served on the board of directors. In November 2008, the SEC found Prosper to be in violation of the Securities Act prompting a class action lawsuit from Prosper lenders.

John Brown Witchel was also the creator of FlashMob Supercomputing, a massive computing collaboration designed to make supercomputing available to the masses. However, it failed in its goal to enter the (November 2003) Top 500 list of supercomputers.

Prior to co-founding Prosper, Mr. Witchel developed BrowserCam, an online tool for testing the cross-browser compatibility of websites. BrowserCam was acquired in 2007 by Gomez and the BrowserCam service was discontinued on February 1, 2013.

In 1999, Mr. Witchel was the CEO and co-founder of Red Gorilla, a pioneer in online application syndication that went bankrupt in less than a year. Prior to Red Gorilla, he founded XCom Corporation, a leading web consultancy that was acquired by USWeb (now bankrupt), where Mr. Witchel served as a managing partner.

He holds a M.S. from the University of San Francisco and a B.A. in political science from Stanford University. While at Stanford University, he was arrested in 1991 and booked on suspicion of felony arson and possession of a destructive device. He is a former American record holder and NCAA champion in swimming.

Famous Quotes:

• The fundraisers I go to are all open bar. I don't think I'd go to one that wasn't.