Mitch Ratcliffe

Persuadio is a social network and information analysis and visualization company launched at PC Forum in March 2005. He is a long-term consultant to Audible Inc., currently working on the company’s self-produced audio and podcasting launch.

Ratcliffe has chronicled and participated in the development of the Internet since the late 80s, when he was an early member of The W.E.L.L. In the 1990s, he covered networking, privacy and cryptography for MacWEEK, and was the editor of Digital Media: A Seybold Report, the first publication to explain how the Internet would really work. By 1996, he had launched Internet/Media Strategies and was starting and investing in companies for SoftBank, consulting with leaders like America Online, Audible, EarthWeb, Time Warner, Personify, and many others. ZD Net brought him on to lead their Year 2000 coverage for the two years leading up to Y2K In 1999, he took on the content development for ON24, the financial news network-where he co-authored the business plans and built the editorial and content teams from their launch. He left in 2001, when I/MS partnered with The Petkevich Group, a San Francisco merchant bank focusing on healthcare and information technology, to launch a research group. Since 2002, he has been editorial director of InnovationWORLD, a newsletter covering foreign direct investment and a consultant to Audible Inc.