Executive Bios
Nick Grouf, Co-Founder
Nick Grouf is the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of privately-held Spot Runner, Inc., a technology company that is developing the next generation of advertising services.
Grouf and longtime business partner, David Waxman, have successfully built and sold two prior companies, PeoplePC and Firefly Network, both of which focused on harnessing the democratizing power of the Internet.
Grouf formerly served as co-founder, chairman and CEO of PeoplePC, Inc., which was dedicated to simplifying the process of joining the online world and grew to become the fifth largest Internet service provider in the U.S. PeoplePC served over 600,000 individual subscribers as well as Fortune 500 corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Vivendi Universal and Delta Air Lines and The New York Times. In August 2000, Grouf took the company public and in 2002, it was acquired by EarthLink.
Prior to founding PeoplePC, Grouf served as a venture partner at Softbank Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm based in San Jose, California.
Grouf was also the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Firefly Network, Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft in 1998. Its core product, the Firefly Passport, became the foundation for Microsoft’s Passport and .NET initiatives. While at Firefly, Grouf was also a co-founder and Director of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and co-founder of TrustE.
Grouf spent his early career with McKinsey & Co. in its New York office, where he focused on media and technology companies, as well as at Goldman Sachs, where he worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group.
A native New Yorker, Grouf holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Yale, where he was awarded the Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for Best Thesis.
David Waxman, Co-Founder
David Waxman is a co-founder of privately-held Spot Runner, Inc., a technology company that is developing the next generation of advertising services.
Waxman and longtime business partner Nick Grouf have successfully built and sold two prior companies, PeoplePC and Firefly Network, both of which focused on harnessing the democratizing power of the Internet.
Prior to launching Spot Runner, Waxman served as president and co-founder of Memento Press, a San Francisco-based retail consumer imaging company. He remains on that company’s board of directors. He previously held several consulting positions in marketing and consumer imaging, including developing the consumer business for Powis Parker, Inc. and Ofoto, Inc., a Kodak company, where he was responsible for the company’s marketing launch in the United Kingdom, Germany and France.
Before joining Ofoto, Waxman co-founded PeoplePC, Inc., which grew to become the fifth largest Internet service provider in the U.S., Dedicated to simplifying the process of joining the online world, PeoplePC served over 600,000 individual subscribers as well as Fortune 100 corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Vivendi Universal and Delta Air Lines, The New York Times and other Fortune 500 corporations. Waxman was involved with all aspects of the business until its purchase by EarthLink in 2002. In his role as VP of Marketing, Waxman led a successful $40 million campaign which included television, direct, Internet and outdoor advertising.
Before he formed PeoplePC, Waxman co-founded Firefly Network and served as creative director. He was responsible for the look and feel and the overall user experience of Firefly’s web properties. Firefly was acquired by Microsoft Corporation in 1998, and the Firefly Passport became the foundation for Microsoft’s Passport and .Net initiatives.
Waxman holds an A.B. degree in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley and an S.M. degree from the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.