Jason Mcabe Calacanis was born to Greek and Irish parents on November 20,1970 in Brooklyn, New York. He is a well-known and respected internet entrepreneur and blogger. He has founded and co-founded several tech companies and is also a very active angel investor in several technology startups. He is also the founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, a human powered search engine specializing in common English language search terms.
So just how rich is Jason Calacanis? His net worth and his company Mahalo, is $20 million dollars. This was accumulated with the help of prominent investors including Mark Cuban, CBS, News Corp, Sequoia Capital, and Elon Musk.
Jason Calacanis Net Worth $20 Million
He was educated at Xaverian High School, then from 1988 he attended Fordham University in New York, graduating with a BA in Psychology, following which Calacanis quickly founded the Rising Tide Studios. This publishing company released several online and print magazines, and he later used his experience and influence in media to publish the “Silicon Alley Reporter”. The short newsletter grew to become a 300 page magazine that was influential in trailblazing the dot-com era in New York. It even branched out with a sister publication, the Digital Coast Reporter, which focused on technology developments for the West Coast. When the dot-com era came to a close, the company was sold and the publications folded. However, Calacanis was far from done for, and he co-founded Weblogs Inc. with Brian Alvey, which was later sold to AOL for $25-30 million, when it was generating $1,000 every day. Calcanis’ net worth was rising steadily.
Calacanis continues to concentrate on investing, especially angel investing in many technology startups, most notably Gowalla, Thumbtack, Uber, and ubermedia. He mainly focuses on his duties as Mahalo.com’s CEO, but he is also a sought after as a keynote speaker and blogger, all of which add to his net worth.
Calacanis was recently involved in two strange and controversial events. The first was at the Gnomedex event in 2007. Calacanis was giving a speech about Mahalo, when he was severely heckled from the audience. The heckler, Dave Winer accused him of pitching Mahalo to the audience. He remained unrepentant, and later even stated; “It’s all about Jason and his investors making money. Why should I care about that?”
The second incident involved the launch of the Apple iPad and his Twitter account. Calacanis posted several tweets in which he claimed to have a reviewer’s copy of the iPad device.
Calacanis listed several of the features of the device in detail only to later reveal that he did not have such a device, nor did it even exist. Calacanis later explained that this was his way of poking fun at the hype and hysteria that often surround iPad launches. Many in the mainstream media were embarrassed at this hoax, because the tweets were reported as factual.
Calacanis continues to post his views and opinions on his blog www.calacanis.com and he can also be heard weekly on CalacanisCast, on the PodTech Network.
In his personal life, Jason Calacanis currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and their pet bulldog.
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