Robert S. "Bob" Rosenschein () is an American-Israeli internet entrepreneur. He was founder, Chairman and CEO of
Answers.com, formerly
GuruNet, until May 2011, when it was bought by Summit Partner's AFCV Holdings for $127 million. His latest startup was Curiyo.
Early life and career
Rosenschein was born in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg ( ; ) is the capital city of the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,099 as of 2020, Harrisburg is the ninth-most populous city in Pennsylvania. It is the larger of the two pr ...
to Jewish parents Martin Rosenschein and Yolanda Bleier. He graduated with a
BSc in Computer Science from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
in 1976. In his early career Rosenschein worked for Data General, American Management Systems, the World Bank, and Ashton-Tate. He moved to Israel in 1983, where he worked as a software consultant.
In 1988 Rosenschein and his brother, Prof. Jeffrey Rosenschein, founded Kivun, later Accent Software. Its initial product was
Dagesh
The dagesh () is a diacritic that is used in the Hebrew alphabet. It takes the form of a dot placed inside a consonant. A dagesh can either indicate a "hard" plosive version of the consonant (known as , literally 'light dot') or that the conson ...
, the first Hebrew/English word processor for Windows. From 1991 to 1992, the company consulted to Microsoft, helping design and develop Hebrew and Arabic versions of Windows 3.1. The company went on to develop multi-lingual software tools under the Accent brand. For the Hebrew Windows and Dagesh projects, Rosenschein was awarded the Prime Minister of Israel's Award for Software Achievement in 1997.
In 1999, Rosenschein founded GuruNet with
Morton Meyerson
Morton Herbert Meyerson (born 3 June 1938) is an American computer industry executive who held positions in the Ross Perot-founded Electronic Data Systems and subsequently at Perot Systems and General Motors. Ross Perot paid $10 million for namin ...
and
Mark Tebbe, which created a 1-click popup Internet-based information utility. The product later became Answers.com, incorporating both editorial reference and user-generated Q&A information. The company was listed on NASDAQ as Answers Corporation from October 13, 2004 until April 14, 2011, when it was purchased and taken private by AFCV Holdings.
In 2009, Rosenschein was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 Award Finalist in the Metropolitan New York region.
Rosenschein founded and ran Curiyo from 2013-2016.
See also
Answers.com
Footnotes
External links
Curiyo demonstration and interview, with Robert ScobleForbes ProfileSurviving a heart attack*
*
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Living people
American computer businesspeople
American technology chief executives
American technology company founders
Businesspeople from Pennsylvania
MIT School of Engineering alumni
People from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
1953 births
American people of Israeli descent