Steven Snyder - Net Perceptions

Net Perceptions

In April 1996 Snyder met members of the GroupLens Research group. He quickly saw the commercial potential for their technology, known as collaborative filtering, a form of recommender system, and discussed the possibility of forming a company around the technology. Snyder argued that a research group from MIT had formed a company in 1995 that was already commercializing collaborative filtering, and that the window of opportunity was closing. (The MIT company would later become Firefly). The team of Snyder, Brad Miller, John Riedl, Joe Konstan, and David Gardiner founded Net Perceptions in May 1996, and licensed the technology from the University of Minnesota in June 1996. Soon after they received initial funding from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (Hennes 2001).

Led by Snyder as CEO, Net Perceptions became a leading company for recommender systems during the Internet boom through the late 90's and early 2000s (Dragan 2001). Net Perceptions had many of the leading Web companies as customers, and was very visible in the Internet food chain. In 2000, Steven Snyder, Brad Miller, and John Riedl received the World Technology Award in the Commerce category for their contributions to E-Commerce, and Net Perceptions also received the MIT Sloan School E-Commerce Award for Technology Innovation in May 1999 (MIT News Office 1999). Among many other media interviews, Snyder participated an ABC Nightline show about Net Perceptions technology in Dec 1999 (Krulwich 1999).