Ed Sussman Bio

Ed Sussman is a digital, new media, technology and publishing executive, expert in building fast-growth digital businesses. He’s known especially as a pioneer in transforming mainstream media companies into digital powerhouses, bringing large-scale blogging networks to Fast Company.com and Inc.com starting in 2004, creating a video channel called FastCompany.TV in 2006, and blending social media contributions with professional journalism starting in 2007.  He has a 20+ year management track record, including leading edit, business and tech at Inc.com, FastCompany.com and founding the open-source based Software as  Service provider, Buzzr.com.

Ed Sussman

I provide organizations with long-term vision, innovation, team building and solid business and financial planning.  I’ve run large teams of editorial, sales, marketing and technology professionals.

Professional Experience

Currently, I serve as the CEO of Buzzr.com, a partnership with Lullabot, one of the world’s leading Drupal technology firms. We created a Saas CMS and  publishing platform enabling non-technical people, businesses and groups to create and manage highly sophisticated, social media-rich websites. We also have a platform just for the college market called Buzzr Higher Education Edition, created in partnership with mStoner, the world-leader in websites for the higher education market.

We’ve built our platform by creating an entirely new usability layer on top of open source Drupal, integrating more than 200 of the most popular features of Drupal into Quickstart templates and providing turn key customer support,  including cloud hosting.  With editions in English and Spanish, Buzzris a popular reseller platform, including for providers of websites to retail stores, small business in the U.S. and Latin America, and the higher education world.

I previously served as president of Mansueto Digital, where I ran the websites for Inc.com and FastCompany.com for five years (and founded FastCompany TV with Robert Scoble, IncTechnology.com & IncBizNet.com), and as executive vice president of Mansueto Ventures, overseeing business development, events (the Inc. 500/5000 conference) and digital media for Fast Company and Inc. magazines. Previously, I served as a Managing Director for Gruner and Jahr U.S.A, a multi-hundred million dollar magazine publishing arm of Bertelsmann, where I oversaw the same properties prior to their sale. I grew digital revenue 600% during my tenure to more than $12 million annually and business development revenue more than 200% to about $3 million.

My major initiatives included creating major social media strategy for our brands, including, in 2007, relaunching FastCompany.com (on a Drupal platform) as a major integrated journalism/community platform, attracting more than 100,000 members and 2,000 member blogs in 6 months. I wrote about the platform in a story called The Media is Social.

My recent writing  (March 2014) about “social journalism” has appeared on Pando Daily and The New York Observer and my innovative thinking was written about by GigaOm.

I also created a major user-generated database/community for fast-growth private companies, culminating in the Inc. 5,000 and IncBiznet.com, which drew more than 20,000 companies in the first two years. I created the Inc. 5,000 as part of the latter.  My background is as a journalist (executive editor of Inc. and various positions at Worth, P.O.V., The Financial Times of London and the Wall Street Journal/Europe) and lawyer. I was fortunate to teach business journalism as an adjunct professor at NYU Journalism School’s Business and Economic Reporting program for four years in the 2000s.

As a consultant, on behalf of multi-national companies and private investors, including private equity funds, I’ve evaluated investment and takeover opportunities involving multi-platform content producers, especially online ventures or traditional publishers ramping up their  digital presences. I also occasionally  assist and/or serve on the Board of Directors of early stage internet companies (such as GoJotter.com.) My consulting services are described here

Learn more about me on Ed Sussman LinkedIn Profile: www.linkedin.com/in/edsussman/

Education

I graduated the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. and  Duke Law, first my class (summa cum laude and order of the coif), and clerked for a federal district court and a federal appellate court judge. I have published several legal academic articles and remain an active member of the Bar of the State of New York.

Location

New York, N.Y.

Contact

You can reach me at ed@buzzr.com

Ed Sussman Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EdSussman

Ed Sussman Twitter at https://twitter.com/edsussman

Other Sites
Find me at Crunchbase here
Ed Sussman Social Streams Profile
Ed Sussman Photo Blog
Ed Sussman on Drupal.org
Blogger (Google Platform)