Grant Hosford

I'm a dad, entrepreneur and "data geek".

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/granthosford
Twitter: @ghos4
Pasadena, California, United States
Member since May 06, 2013

As CEO of codeSpark I want to teach "generation tablet" to love computer science. Quote_down

About

Education

Claremont McKenna College , BA , International Relations

The Fletcher School (Tufts University) , MA , International Business & Economics

I am a(n):

Entrepreneur

Companies I've founded or co-founded:

codeSpark, DinnerDate

Companies I work or worked for:

Idealab, eHarmony, ZAAZ

Achievements (products built, personal awards won):

I joined ZAAZ as the first non-founder executive, co-founded the web analytics practice there and helped the company grow from $0 to $10M+ in revenue.

At eHarmony I helped launch and run our publishing business which grew to 1B ad impressions a month and 10M UVs/month. It was also the #2 wedding network in the US.

I also ran the team that launched the first ever completely mobile brand for eHarmony called Jazzed.

If you're an entrepreneur or corporate innovator, why?

I want to invent something cool.

My favorite startups:

Uber, Dropbox, Tinybop, Clarity.fm and The Honest Company

What's most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?

It can be a very lonely journey, even with invested co-founders. But the personal satisfaction of success, even small achievements, is tremendous.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs/innovators make?

Not testing carefully for who your early adopter customer will be.

What are the top three lessons you've learned as an entrepreneur?

Two big lessons: There is no failure except for failing to learn. Start-ups should be learning machines that spend each day getting smarter as quickly and as cheaply as they can

Don't hire anyone unless they are the best you can hope to find for what they do. Period.

Full bio

Grant is the CEO and founder of CodeSpark, a learning game company dedicated to making hard things fun. CodeSpark’s first mission is re-inventing Computer Science for the tablet generation.

Previously Grant was a Sr. Director at Idealab, one of the most successful tech incubators in the world. Grant was responsible for evaluating and testing early stage ideas so the best could be turned into companies. Idealab has started over 125 companies since 1996.

Before joining Idealab, Grant was a senior executive in the online dating industry. He was a founding team member at DinnerDate, a dating service (www.dinnerdate.com) backed by the founder of Planet Hollywood, Robert Earl and helped start several new businesses at eHarmony, including a 100% mobile dating brand and an online publishing business that grew to 10M unique visitors a month.

Previously, Grant was VP of Marketing at Blue Lava Group and Head of Business Development at ZAAZ, Inc., an award winning interactive agency that was acquired by Wunderman in 2006. For over a decade he's been using data to improve customer acquisition and conversion online.

Grant started his career in finance, working for Coopers and Lybrand and Brazilian investment bank Banco Pactual. He fell in love with the power of the internet in the late 90's and has worked in tech since 1999.

Grant did his education at Tufts University - The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the University of Southern California and Claremont McKenna College.