Tim Westergren
| Tim Westergren | |
|---|---|
 Westergren at the 2010 Time 100 Gala | |
| Born |
Timothy Brooks Westergren December 21, 1965 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Occupation | Co-founder of Pandora Radio |
Timothy Brooks "Tim" Westergren (born December 21, 1965 in Minneapolis), is a co-founder of Pandora Radio.[1]
Biography
Westergren was born in 1965 in Minneapolis. He attended boarding school, Cranbrook Kingswood, during his high school years. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science.[2] Following his graduation, Westergren spent twenty years working as a record producer and composer (working as a nanny in between jobs), devoting the majority of his time to emerging artists and independent labels.
In 1999 he started Pandora Media along with two co-founders: Will Glaser and Jon Kraft. The Oakland, Calif., company went public in 2011,[3] reporting $138 million in revenue that fiscal year.
As an early project, Westergren and Glaser created the Music Genome Project, a mathematical algorithm to organize music.[1] The idea was marketed by Pandora Media. He, along with the other developers, patented the Music Genome Project: software that uses a mathematical algorithm that attempts to predict a person's musical taste based on a small musical sampling, and is covered by United States Patent No. 7,003,515.
As the company's chief strategy officer, Westergren spends the majority of his time traveling the nation and gathering feedback from Pandora Radio users. In 2010 he was listed by Time magazine as one among the 100 most influential people in the world.[4]
In April 2016, Pandora Media announced that Tim Westergren would replace Brian McAndrews as CEO. He had previously served as CEO from 2002-2004.[5]
References
- 1 2 "Corporate Team". Pandora. 2010-05-04.
Tim Westergren founded Pandora in January 2000 and now serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. Tim is an award-winning composer, an accomplished musician and a record producer with 20 years of experience in the music industry.
- ↑ "Pandora at Stanford: Beginnings, with Tim Westergren '88". Events.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2012-11-06.
- ↑ "Startup Strategies: Advice from successful entrepreneurs about making it-- and learning from failure". SUCCESS magazine. SUCCESS Media. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
- ↑ Kurt Andersen (April 29, 2010). "The 2010 Time 100: Tim Westergren". Time magazine. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
A former rock and jazz musician, Westergren had a big idea in 1999: the Music Genome Project, a typology for categorizing any piece of music according to nearly 2,000 traits identified by Pandora's experts. ...
- ↑ Chandler, Michele. "Pandora Founder Tim Westergren Returns As CEO, Stock Hits Sour Note". Investor's Business Daily. investors.com. Retrieved 25 April 2016.