Joe Kraus is the founder of Excite

Excite

Excite is a collection of Internet sites and services owned by IAC Search & Media, which is a subsidiary of InterActive Corporation . Launched in 1994, it is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal, a search engine, a web-based email, instant messaging, stock...

, JotSpot, and DigitalConsumer.org, along with his long-time business partner Graham Spencer

Graham Spencer

Graham Spencer was a co-founder of the Excite search engine along with Joe Kraus. Later, he also co-founded JotSpot with Kraus. Google acquired JotSpot in 2006.In August 2005 he was honored by InfoWorld Magazine as one of the 2005 Innovators of the Year....

. Currently, Kraus is an Investment Partner on the Google Ventures

Google Ventures

Google Ventures is the venture capital investment arm of Google Inc. that makes financially driven investments in technology companies. Google Ventures seeks to invest in start-up companies in a variety of fields ranging from Internet, software, and hardware to clean-tech, bio-tech, and health...

 team.

A long time entrepreneur, Kraus has been involved with early-stage technology development and starting companies for more than twelve years. Upon graduation from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1993 with a bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 in political science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

, he joined with five engineering friends to found the Internet company Excite, which would declare bankruptcy in 2001 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BNO/is_2001_Nov/ai_79531140. The original president of Excite, Kraus was deeply involved in product strategy, direction and vision as the company grew. He also held senior operational roles in business development, international development and content.

After leaving Excite@Home in 2000, Kraus was a co-founder of Digitalconsumer.org, a non-profit consumer organization with more than 50,000 members dedicated to expanding consumers' fair-use rights to digital media. Kraus, along with other co-founder Graham Spencer, continues to work on these issues. In 2006, Kraus joined the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...

. In addition to his non-profit focus, he has also spent many years as an angel investor

Angel investor

An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...

, working with numerous early-stage technology companies.

Kraus was CEO of JotSpot, which was purchased by Google in 2006. While at Google, Kraus has been director of product management at Google. Among his projects there is OpenSocial

OpenSocial

OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces for web-based social network applications, developed by Google along with MySpace and a number of other social networks.It was released November 1, 2007....

, Google's effort to develop API standards for social networking platforms. He moved over to the Google Ventures team in November 2009.

Kraus helped to lead the investment for Google Ventures in OpenCandy

OpenCandy

OpenCandy is a company based in San Diego that produces an advertising software module consisting of a Microsoft Windows library that can be incorporated in a Windows installer...

and is on their Board of Directors.

External links

• Weblog
• BBC News: Lessons from Silicon Valley
• New York Times: Google and friends to gang up on Facebook