Please provide a comprehensive profile/biography of Wonder CEO, Justin Wohlstadter.

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Please provide a comprehensive profile/biography of Wonder CEO, Justin Wohlstadter.

Hello, and thank you for your request for a professional profile of Wonder Founder and CEO, Justin Wohlstadter. In short, Mr. Wohlstadter has founded four companies during the course of his career. He has also invested in a number of startups, half of which have been acquired.

Please note that outside of his LinkedIn profile, I found very little in the way of recently published information on Mr. Wohlstadter. Of the very few interviews I found, most are more than 2 years old. While older information than Wonder typically likes to present, I have included them here as they add context to the overall picture of his career. Keep in mind, however, that any mentions to Wonder in these articles may no longer accurately reflect the company's services. Mr. Wohlstadter's most recently published article is from 2014 and while he is active on Twitter, he appears to use the platform primarily to re-tweet interesting and insightful information from influencers.

Please read on for a deep dive of my research.

EDUCATION
Mr. Wohlstadter began his college education at Washington University in St. Louis. After his freshman year, he transferred to Harvard University, where he achieved his BA in Government in 2009.

He went on to achieve his Master of Science (MSc) in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford, in England (2011). As you'll have seen on his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Wohlstadter wrote his dissertation on how "new Internet technology will affect access to higher education in the US and UK."

FOUNDER / WORK EXPERIENCE
Mr. Wohlstadter founded three companies prior to the launch of Wonder - Bluevolume, A Dozen Trees, and BOLDstart Ventures. Bluevolume, his first company, was a web design firm launched in 2002, prior to his enrollment at Washington University. In 2008, he founded A Dozen Trees, which he describes as "a startup that aimed to help small- and medium-sized businesses give smarter, and better communicate the impact of their donations to their customers." BOLDstart, which I'll describe in greater detail below, is a seed fund that invests in technology companies.

From 2009-2011, Mr. Wohlstadter served as Director for investment company Penny Black, building its early-stage venture capital arm. According to Observer, he was brought on to "help source deals and manage investments for a wealthy Wall Street pro." Penny Black would eventually evolve into BOLDstart Ventures, which Mr. Wohlstadter co-founded. BOLDstart was built to provide investment in "early-stage web and mobile technology." Many of the companies funded by BOLDstart during Mr. Wohlstadter's tenure have been acquired by the likes of Google, Salesforce, and LinkedIn. Other companies that received investment through BOLDstart during that period include IndiGoGo and Yipit. BOLDstart Ventures announced in late 2016 that it had raised more than $21M in its third fund. Mr. Wohlstadter left the firm in 2012, but continues to serve as an advisor.

Wohlstadter's other employment experience includes a position as Director of Product Design for Divide (formerly called Enterproid). He held the position from 2011-2012. The company was acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported $120M in cash and stock.

In October of 2012, Mr. Wohlstadter launched Wonder, an on-demand research company designed to "apply that human learning model that's existed forever, to all this new, cool technology we were building." A self-described perfectionist, Mr. Wohlstadter's Wonder has evolved a number of times since its inception. He discusses the early days of Wonder in this 2017 YouTube video (a segment of a longer presentation). The video includes a description of his two and a half year-long process of "building the wrong thing" that ultimately resulted in getting Wonder to where it is today - a "simple, beautiful product." Originally designed to be a "human centered search engine," Wonder now offers a wide variety of clients "effortless and flexible" secondary research services that return results around in 24 hours or less.

He says one of the key things he learned during Wonder's evolution to date was "don't take people out of the flow of their daily lives." In other words, don't create a product that asks people to completely change the way they do things - find a way to help them do the things they do better and more efficiently.

INVESTOR
Mr. Wohlstadter began investing in technology startups "just a few weeks after graduating from Harvard," according to Observer. His typical investments range from $50K - $100K, and according to CBInsights, he "prefers to invest in consumer and SME internet-focused companies. He looks for companies that have a minimum viable product and which are past the initial alpha/beta launch stage."

Passionate about startups, he told Observer in 2011, "I am an evangelizer; I mean, I will talk about this stuff nonstop." Companies in which he has invested include E14N, Hashable, Localresponse, ShowMe, Techstars, and Yieldmo.

Of the sixteen companies in which he has invested, eight have been acquired: DoodleDeals, Blaze.io, Klout, PlayHaven, GoInstant, Divide, Rapportive, and ThinkNear.

ACHIEVEMENTS / INTERESTING THINGS OF NOTE
In 2012, at the age of 25, Wohlstadter was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 (Media) list. The list was announced just prior to the launch of Wonder.

In 2015, Mr. Wohlstadter was a guest speaker at Girls Who Code.

INTERVIEWS / ARTICLES
An additional interview with Mr. Wohlstadter can be seen here.

This is a link to a brief article Mr. Wohlstadter published on Medium in 2014.

CONCLUSION
To sum it up, Justin Wohlstadter founded Wonder in 2012. Prior to its launch, he founded three other companies: Bluevolume, A Dozen Trees, and BOLDstart Ventures. Mr. Wohlstadter is also an active investor in technology startups. Half of the sixteen companies in which he's invested have been acquired by the likes of Google, Salesforce and LinkedIn.

I hope this information was useful. Thanks for using Wonder. We look forward to helping you with your next question!

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