Rafe Furst

Rafe Furst is an entrepreneur, impact investor, writer, producer and poker player. He is Co-Founder of Crowdfunder and advises many projects that involve technology and social entrepreneurship. Furst has spoken about transformation of early-stage finance at TED, and in 2006, he won a World Series of Poker Championship Bracelet. A 2011 book titled, Shake the World featuring Furst along with other business and non-profit leaders, described him as a "twenty-first century polymath."

Education and early career

Furst holds an M.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Symbolic Systems, both from Stanford University.

Furst began his career as an artificial intelligence researcher at the Kestrel Institute. Furst left academia to co-found his first company, Pick'em Sports, in 1996, which was sold to a public company in 1999.

Entrepreneurship and angel investing

After the success of Pick'em Sports, Furst helped launch and run several other ventures, including Expert Insight, an instructional media company which won several awards but was ultimately unsuccessful in the marketplace.