John Battelle Biography and Net Worth

Mr. Battelle is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor and author who has founded or co-founded various online, conference, magazine and other media businesses. He is the co-founder of Recount Media Inc., a NY-based media platform, sold in 2023 to The News Movement, and chair of the board of directors of Sovrn Holdings, Inc., a programmatic advertising and publisher platform that connects publishers with monetization solutions. He is also an Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University and serves as a director at the UC Berkely Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, he was the founder/executive chair and CEO of NewCo Platform, Inc., a disruptive conference and media platform. In 2005, Mr. Battelle founded the Internet media company Federated Media Publishing, where he served as chairman and CEO until its sale to LIN Media in 2014.

Mr. Battelle founded and served as executive producer of the Web 2 Summit and maintains Searchblog, an ongoing daily site which covers the intersection of media, technology and culture. From 2001-2004 he occupied the Bloomberg chair in Business Journalism for the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the founder and served from 1997-2001 as chairman and CEO of Standard Media International (SMI) and as publisher of The Industry Standard and TheStandard.com. Prior to that, he was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and Wired Ventures. Mr. Battelle previously served on the board of directors of the MMA, and the Internet Advertising Bureau and he was a founding board member of the Online Publishers Association. In 2005, he authored The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Penguin/Portfolio), an international bestseller published in more than 25 languages. He is considered to be an expert in the field of media and technology, and has appeared on national and international news channels such as CBS, BBC, CNN, PBS, Discovery and CNBC. Honors and awards include: “Global Leader for Tomorrow” and “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; a finalist in the 2000 “Entrepreneur of the Year” competition by Ernst & Young; “Innovator — One of Ten Best Marketers in the Business” by Advertising Age; and one of the “Most Important People on The Web” by PCWorld. Mr. Battelle holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.