Rich Skrenta

Rich has a background in both business management and technical expertise. In his last position, Rich held a variety of senior roles at Netscape/America Online, including Director of Engineering for Netscape Search, AOL Music, and AOL Shopping. Rich joined Netscape/AOL upon its purchase of NewHoo/The Open Directory Project, where he was Co-founder & CEO. The Open Directory is the largest human-edited directory of the web, currently used by Google, AOL and other major web portals.

Previously, Rich led an engineering group at Sun Microsystems implementing network security and encryption products. Rich also successfully operated a successful small online gaming company from 1994-2001. Rich has a BA degree from Northwestern University.

As of March 2005 the three largest newspaper chains in the US - Gannett, Tribune and Knight Ridder - have jointly made a 75% investment in Topix.net.

More about Rich at skrenta.com .