Ben Parr (born February 12, 1985) is an American journalist, author, venture capitalist and entrepreneur. He is the author of ''Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention'', a book on the science and psychology of attention and how to capture the attention of others. He is the President and co-founder of Octane AI, a
marketing automation
Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks and consolidate multi-channel (email, SMS, chatbot, social media) interactions, tracking and ...
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...
, and a co-founder of
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
venture capital fund Theory Forge Ventures. He was previously a venture capitalist, the co-editor and editor-at-large of
Mashable
Mashable is a Online newspaper, news website, digital media platform and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005.
History
Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2004. Early iterations o ...
, and a columnist and commentator for CNET. In 2012, he was named to the
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...
30 Under 30.
Early life and education
Parr was born in 1985, in rural
Princeton, Illinois
Princeton is a city in and the county seat of Bureau County, Illinois, United States. The population was 7,832 at the 2020 census.
Princeton is part of the Ottawa, Illinois, Ottawa Ottawa, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area, Micropolitan Statistic ...
to Harold E. Parr Jr. and Vilarat Nid Parr. He quit the football team to become a drum major. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout in 2002 and graduated as valedictorian from Princeton High School in 2004.
Parr is a serial entrepreneur, having started his first company while attending
Northwestern University
Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
. In September 2006, during his junior year at Northwestern, he started a campaign to protest the launch of
Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
's News Feed feature. The group he created, "Students Against Facebook News Feed", peaked at over 730,000 members before Facebook acquiesced to the protests and added more privacy controls.
Parr graduated from Northwestern University in 2008 with a B.A. in Science in Human Culture,
Political Science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...
and a minor in Business Institutions. He was awarded the Kapnick Prize for his work in promoting entrepreneurship on campus. He worked as a Community Assistant at Elder Hall and was elected president of InNUvation, Northwestern's entrepreneurship club, as an undergraduate.
Career
Early career
Before his graduation in 2008, Parr joined his mentors Troy Henikoff and Mark Achler to launch Free Lunch, a Facebook application development company. After Facebook changed its app developer policies, Parr moved on with Achler to work at Veritas Health.
Mashable
Parr joined Mashable as a writer in August 2008, but was promoted to Associate Editor in March 2009, Co-Editor in September 2009 and Editor-at-Large in May 2011. During his tenure, he wrote 2,446 articles focused on web technology, business and media, opened Mashable's west coast office, and helped manage Mashable's editorial team. He was fired from the company in November 2011 after a disagreement over compensation.
After Mashable
In February 2012, Parr announced that he was joining the technology news website CNET as a commentator and columnist. His column, The Social Analyst, "digs into the key companies, trends and players powering the tech and social media universe, from the smallest startups to tech giants." He retired his CNET column in 2013.
In February 2012, Parr started a company, The Peep Project, the firm attempted to change the way people interact with information. The project dissolved in April 2013.
In 2012, Parr started a seed-stage venture capital fund, DominateFund, with partners Matt Schlicht and Mazy Kazerooni. The firm coaches startups on how to get attention for their products through celebrity partnerships, press, marketing, customer acquisition and viral products. It has backed a variety of companies including uBeam, Shots, and Graft Concepts (acquired by Novatel Wireless).
Captivology
On February 4, 2014, Parr announced that he was in the process of writing his first book, ''Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention'', released by
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...
in March 2015. His book focuses on understanding the psychology of attention and how that scientific knowledge can be applied to capture the attention of others. His book includes interviews with Sheryl Sandberg,
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh ( ; born January 14, 1963) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. A pioneer of modern Independent film, independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventiv ...
Grant Imahara
Grant Masaru Imahara (October 23, 1970 – July 13, 2020) was an American electrical engineer, roboticist, and television host. He was best known for his work on the television series ''MythBusters'', on which he designed, built, and opera ...
,
Brian Stelter
Brian Patrick Stelter (born September 3, 1985) is an American journalist best known as the former chief media correspondent for CNN and host of the CNN program ''Reliable Sources'', roles he held from 2013 to 2022. He returned to CNN in 2024. St ...
,
David Copperfield
''David Copperfield''Dickens invented over 14 variations of the title for this work; see is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to matur ...
Shigeru Miyamoto
is a Japanese video game designer, video game producer, producer and Creative director#Video games, game director at Nintendo, where he has served as one of its representative directors as an executive since 2002. Widely regarded as one o ...
,
Alan Baddeley
Alan David Baddeley CBE Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (born 23 March 1934) is a British psychologist. He is known for his research on memory and for developing the three-component model of working memory. He is a professor of psychology at th ...
Harvard Business Review
''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a not-for-profit, independent corporation that is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. ''HBR'' is published six times a year ...
and
USA Today
''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...
. The book was named the best marketing book of 2015 by
Strategy+Business
Strategy (from Ancient Greek, Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "troop leadership; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sens ...
Magazine. In 2016, ''Captivology'' won the Small Business Book Award for marketing.
In September 2014, Parr launched a new column with Inc. Magazine, focused on business and entrepreneurship.
Octane AI
On November 2, 2016, Parr announced Octane AI, a chatbot creation platform for Facebook Messenger. The platform powers the bots used by celebrities, brands, small businesses, and publishers, including
50 Cent
Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, and television producer. Born in Queens, a borough of New York City, Jackson began pursuing a musical career in 1996. In 1999–2000, ...
,
Kiss
A kiss is the touching or pressing of one's lips against another person, animal or object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely; depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sex ...
,
Aerosmith
Aerosmith is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Boston in 1970. The group consists of lead vocalist Steven Tyler, bassist Tom Hamilton (musician), Tom Hamilton, drummer Joey Kramer, and guitarists Joe Perry (musician), Joe Perry and B ...
, and
Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Dee Lohan ( ; born July 2, 1986) is an American actress, singer, producer, and businesswoman. Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, Lohan was signed to Ford Models at age three. She appeared as a regular on the soap opera ' ...
. His company has raised $1.5 million in funding led by
Evernote
Evernote is a note-taking and task management, task-management application software, application developed by the Evernote Corporation.
History
Evernote was acquired by the Italian technology company Bending Spoons in November 2022.
Usage
...
founder Phil Libin at General Catalyst.
In 2017, Octane AI was named one of Gartner's Cool Vendors in Mobile App Development and was featured in ''The New York Times''.
In 2018, Octane AI announced an integration with
Shopify
Shopify Inc., stylized as ''shopify'', headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, operates an e-commerce platform for retail point-of-sale systems that offers payments, marketing, shipping, inventory management, transaction management, and customer eng ...
at the Facebook F8 conference.
In 2020, Octane AI announced a $4.25m funding round led by Bullpen Capital and launched a new product, the Shop Quiz, which allows ecommerce brands build quizzes and guided shopping experiences. The company also announced the hiring of former
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, US, with 15 globally distributed data centers. DigitalOcean provides developers, ...
and
Shutterstock
Shutterstock, Inc. is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools; it is headquartered in New York. Founded in 2002 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of ar ...
executive Heather Adams as vice president of marketing.
Theory Forge Ventures
In 2024, The Information reported that Ben Parr had started an artificial intelligence venture capital fund, Theory Forge Ventures, with his Octane AI co-founder Matt Schlicht. Theory Forge has invested in payments company Payman and email marketing tool Orita.
Other work
Parr is a frequent public speaker and makes regular television appearances. He has been a technology commentator for CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC's Press:here. He has also made cameo appearances on Fox's ''Gotham'' and USA's ''Leap Year''.
In 2015, Parr joined the innovation advisory board of
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), trading as the Lufthansa Group, is a German aviation group. Its major and founding subsidiary airline Lufthansa German Airlines, branded as Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. It ranks List of largest airlin ...
. His term expired in 2018.
In March 2017, Parr was elected to the board of directors of Samasource, a non-profit business with the mission to reduce global poverty by connecting unemployed people in the United States and impoverished countries to digital work.
Parr is signed by Worldwide Speakers Group for speaking engagements and public appearances.
Awards
In 2010, Parr was named a "Technology Industry Trendsetter, Luminary & Chronicler" by the Public Relations Society of America.
In 2011, Parr was named one of the top 10 tech journalists in the world by Say Media. Parr was also named San Francisco's coolest social media geek by SF Weekly.
In 2012, Parr was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30, along with DominateFund co-founders Matt Schlicht and Mazy Kazerooni.
In 2013, Parr was designated as a fellow of the
Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...
's Disruption foundation.
In 2015, Parr was named one of the top 10
Internet of Things
Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...
Tony Fadell
Anthony Michael Fadell (born March 22, 1969) is an American engineer, designer, entrepreneur, and investor. He was senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple Inc. and founder and former CEO of Nest Labs.
Fadell joined Apple Inc. in 2 ...
,
Chris Sacca
Christopher Sacca (born May 12, 1975) is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage ...
and others. He was also named by
Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers ...
as one of 10 people to know in Silicon Valley.
Personal Life
In February 2018, Parr began dating playwright Deborah Yarchun. In March 2023, the two were engaged. They married in April 2024 in Yarchun’s hometown of Austin, Texas.