Thomas Marban

Hey, It's Thomas Marban!

Another entrepreneur on the Internet. (っಠ‿ಠ)っ

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About

My mission is to preserve the foundational principles of the Web, bridging business with a hands-on approach to tech and design. I have extensive experience in the tech and media sectors, launching, selling, and failing in a range of startup endeavors.

I co-founded celum.com in the '90s, leading to its buyout in the mid-2000s. I then co-created Twidroyd, the very first Android Twitter app that scaled to millions of users.
I created Popurls, a Webby Award-winning Web 2.0 news aggregator, which spawned an entire generation of news delivery formats and to this day has inspired thousands of sites across all industries. Both were acquired by Idealab around 2010.
I launched the first dedicated read-it-later service and a real-time news search engine, both of which were acquired in 2014.
I worked with Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly on the CoolTools relaunch, and joined the founding team of three Idealab companies, one of which went public in 2023.

Most recently, I launched BizToc with an investment from Mark Cuban.
I also serve as an advisor-at-large for Idealab and as a consultant for the European Broadcasting Union.

I've been through my fair share of failed ventures—blogging platforms, social apps, newsletter monetization, sports nutrition, fashion aggregators, PR tools, AI edtech, and more. Turns out persistence is just optimism with a longer burn rate.

I'm a recognized expert in news aggregation and contributor to OpenBB — the open-source Bloomberg terminal.
I'm occasionally available for consulting.

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EU JAPAN USA