Ben Parr

Ben Parr (born February 12, 1985) is an American journalist, author, venture capitalist and entrepreneur. He is the author of Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention, a book on the science and psychology of attention and how to capture the attention of others. He is the President and co-founder of Octane AI, a marketing automation and conversational marketing company for e-commerce, and a co-founder of artificial intelligence venture capital fund Theory Forge Ventures. He was previously a venture capitalist, the co-editor and editor-at-large of Mashable, and a columnist and commentator for CNET. In 2012, he was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30.

Parr was born in 1985, in rural Princeton, Illinois to Harold E. Parr Jr. and Vilarat Nid Parr. He quit the football team to become a drum major. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout in 2002 and graduated as valedictorian from Princeton High School in 2004.

Parr is a serial entrepreneur, having started his first company while attending Northwestern University. In September 2006, during his junior year at Northwestern, he started a campaign to protest the launch of Facebook's News Feed feature. The group he created, "Students Against Facebook News Feed", peaked at over 730,000 members before Facebook acquiesced to the protests and added more privacy controls.

Parr graduated from Northwestern University in 2008 with a B.A. in Science in Human Culture, Political Science and a minor in Business Institutions. He was awarded the Kapnick Prize for his work in promoting entrepreneurship on campus. He worked as a Community Assistant at Elder Hall and was elected president of InNUvation, Northwestern's entrepreneurship club, as an undergraduate.

Before his graduation in 2008, Parr joined his mentors Troy Henikoff and Mark Achler to launch Free Lunch, a Facebook application development company. After Facebook changed its app developer policies, Parr moved on with Achler to work at Veritas Health.

Parr joined Mashable as a writer in August 2008, but was promoted to Associate Editor in March 2009, Co-Editor in September 2009 and Editor-at-Large in May 2011. During his tenure, he wrote 2,446 articles focused on web technology, business and media, opened Mashable's west coast office, and helped manage Mashable's editorial team. He was fired from the company in November 2011 after a disagreement over compensation.

In February 2012, Parr announced that he was joining the technology news website CNET as a commentator and columnist. His column, The Social Analyst, "digs into the key companies, trends and players powering the tech and social media universe, from the smallest startups to tech giants." He retired his CNET column in 2013.

In February 2012, Parr started a company, The Peep Project, the firm attempted to change the way people interact with information. The project dissolved in April 2013.