Social Concepts, Inc. Board of Advisors
Jeff Skoll
Founder and Chairman - Participant Productions (www.participantproductions.com)
Skoll has been a leader in technology and philanthropy for many years. In 1996, Skoll joined eBay as its first President and first full-time employee, and developed the company's business plan. After helping to bring CEO Meg Whitman to the company in 1998, Skoll became the VP of Strategic Planning and Analysis at eBay and led the company's acquisition, community development and new business efforts through 2001. In the months before eBay went public in 1998, Skoll led the company's effort to give back to the community, creating the eBay Foundation through an allocation of pre-IPO shares, an innovation that inspired a wave of similar commitments nationwide.
His recent honors and awards include Time Magazine's 100 People of the Year (2006), Wired Magazine's Rave Award (2006), the National Leadership Award for Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley (2004), the Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the International Association of Fundraising Professionals (2003) and the Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the Silicon Valley chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (2002). In addition, in 2003, Jeff was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Toronto. Read more...
Elon Musk
SpaceX is the third company founded by Mr. Musk. Prior to SpaceX, he co-founded PayPal, the world's leading electronic payment system, and served as the company's chairman and CEO. PayPal has over twenty million customers in 38 countries, processes several billion dollars per year and went public on the NASDAQ under PYPL in early 2002. Mr. Musk was the largest shareholder of PayPal until the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002.
Before PayPal, Mr. Musk co-founded Zip2 Corporation in 1995, a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the media industry, with investments from The New York Times Company, Knight-Ridder, MDV, Softbank and the Hearst Corporation. He served as Chairman, CEO and Chief Technology Officer and in March 1999 sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million in an all cash transaction.
Mr. Musk's early experience extends across a spectrum of advanced technology industries, from high energy density ultra-capacitors at Pinnacle Research to software development at Rocket Science and Microsoft. He has a physics degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a business degree from Wharton and originally came out to California to pursue graduate studies in high energy density capacitor physics & materials science at Stanford.
Jim Young, Ph.D
Jim co-founded HOTorNOT.com in 2000, which he helped grow from a one-page website to a multimillion dollar business. Jim knows how to build scalable, reliable Internet services. He holds a Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley, and wrote his dissertation on the design and modeling of complex concurrent systems.
James Hong
James co-founded HOTorNOT.com, Xmethods.net, SaveMyAss.com, and 10over100.org. He holds an MBA and a BS in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley where he was awarded the Bechtel Achievement Award, an honor given to each year's top overall engineering graduate.
In his free time, James enjoys investing in and advising other startups, including BitTorrent, Grouper, Slide, Simply Hired, and of course, fubar!
