Bill Townsend

Bill Townsend (born 1964) is an entrepreneur who helped build several global companies, most notably search engine Lycos, social networking pioneer sixdegrees.com, whose intellectual property formed the basis of LinkedIn, GeoCities (sold to Yahoo!) and Deja.com (sold to Google and ebay). He is an author, motivational speaker, and guest lecturer at conferences and universities worldwide, including TED.

Career

Townsend has founded, co-founded or served on the executive management team or board of directors at several leading Internet companies most notably Internet search engine Lycos and Newegg.com.

He is a partner in PacAirVentures, a global developer of entertainment complexes, featuring unique entertainment, retail and restaurant concepts including vertical wind tunnels, network connected gaming arenas, stem cell and DNA repair centers, music products and music performance immersion camps, and others, operated through the brand name PAVA. He serves on the Board of Directors of Newegg.com, the second largest pureplay e-commerce retailer, and created the company's FirstFromASIA division, which brings Asia's hottest, trendsetting products to the U.S. market. He was a board member at YourOffers.