Garrett Gruener is an American venture capitalist, most known as the founder of

Ask.com Ask.com (originally known as Ask Jeeves) is a question answering–focused e-business founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California, Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky, from ...

and a co-founder of

Alta Partners Alta Partners is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco which invests primarily in biotechnology and life science companies. History The company was founded in 1996 by Dr. Jean Deleage, Ph.D., who was also a founder of the venture capi ...

. He was also a candidate for the

2003 California recall The 2003 California gubernatorial recall election was a special election permitted under California state law. It resulted in voters replacing incumbent Democratic Governor Gray Davis with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. The recall effort span ...

special election from the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

, finishing 28th in a field of 135 candidates with 2,562 votes.

Education

Gruener is a class of '76 UCSD alumnus. He received his

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

at the

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

, and he received his

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

at the

University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

Career

Business

Gruener has been working for more than two decades in the fields of software development, systems engineering, and corporate development. In 1982, he founded '' Virtual Microsystems'', a communications software company that was later merged with a larger corporation. Garrett specializes in information technology and is on the board of directors of nCircle Network Security, Xelerated, and Nanomix. In 1992, he became a Partner at Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. In 1996, along with

Jean Deleage Dr. Jean Deleage Ph.D. (1940–2011) was an early venture capital investor responsible for the founding or co-founding of three notable venture capital firms since 1971: Sofinnova, Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. and Alta Partners. Career Deleage began ...

, Guy Nohra and Marino Polestral, he co-founded

, a venture capital firm in life sciences. As of 2018, he is still serving as the company's Managing Director. He is also on the Board of Directors of

Goldman School of Public Policy The Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy, or the Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP), is a public policy school and one of fourteen schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. Originally named the Graduate Scho ...

, part of the University of California, Berkeley.

Ask.com

In 1995, Gruener alongside David Warthen, a consulting engineer, created a company called Ask Jeeves. After both investing over $250,000 they set up their office in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

. Named after the butler in the stories by

P.G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jee ...

"who had an answer to every problem", the firm provides software that operates in a " question-and-answer" format. In 1997, they made their product available for free on the Internet under the name

. The product utilizes syntactic and semantic analysis to answer the asked question through one of the around 10,000 basic formulas. It shows various versions of the question and allows the user to pick the desired one. In the beginning, the company employed around 40 workers who provided the users with the needed answer to their question. In 1998, the company made around $1 million profit for adds on its website. In 2003, Gruener stepped out of the chairman position at Ask.com

Virtual Microsystems

''Virtual Microsystems Inc'' (VMI) software enabled running

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

and

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

application programs on

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The VA ...

minicomputers. As of mid-1988, ''Virtual Microsystems Inc'' (VMI) and '' Logicraft'' were "the only commercially available products that let VAX/VMS systems run standard off-the-shelf PC applications from terminals and

VAXstation The VAXstation is a discontinued family of workstation computers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation using processors implementing the VAX instruction set architecture. VAXstation systems were typically shipped with either ...

s." VMI's "The Bridge" facilitated using the DEC machine's hard disk, which in turn provided better backups than individualized floppy-based arrangements. ''The Bridge'' is slower than a top end PC; VMI's ''Z-Board'' add-on matches that speed. Other benefits included developing software for PCs and printing on DEC-attached high speed printers.

Politics

Gruener was a candidate for the

2003 California gubernatorial recall election The 2003 California gubernatorial recall election was a special election permitted under California state law. It resulted in voters replacing incumbent Democratic Governor Gray Davis with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. The recall effort spa ...

from the

. He was one of the candidates who aggressively used the Internet to push his message and also ran campaign ads in selected television markets. Eventually, Gruener finished 28th in a field of 135 candidates with 2,562 votes.

Personal life

Gruener is married to Amy Slater, an attorney and lecturer on the subject of negotiations and conflict resolution at the Goldman School of Public Policy and at the

University of California, Hastings College of the Law The University of California, Hastings College of the Law (UC Hastings) is a Public university, public Law school in the United States, law school in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, UC Hastings was the ...

. They live in the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

. Gruener is also a pilot.

References

External links

I'm rich; tax me more by Garrett GruenerWhy Entrepreneurship is Important with Garrett Gruener
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gruener, Garrett People in information technology Living people Year of birth missing (living people) California Democrats American technology company founders American venture capitalists UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni University of California, San Diego alumni American technology chief executives