Drew Curtis

As the founder, sole owner, and CEO of Fark.com, Drew Curtis is in a very unique position where digital media is concerned. For the past 19 years, he has watched as media evolved from an industry that eschewed and dismissed the digital realm to an industry very much aware that their future depends on it.

With over 2000 news items a day submitted by a pool of over one million users, there's very little that happens in the world that doesn't pass across Drew's desk, all thanks to the advances in digital media. And yet, without traditional journalism, there would be nothing to report. Fark represents a new piece of the media consumption equation – curation.

Fark deeply permeates the pop culture zeitgeist - in 2009 Fark was honored for the second time with its own category on Jeopardy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO3wVQkFMco

Fark’s influence continues to be felt 19 years after its founding – in 2014, Fark was mentioned by Yahoo Finance as the highest volume driver of Internet traffic per capita of any site on the Internet (and #9 overall on raw numbers). In pure English, Fark drives outbound traffic equivalent to a quarter of all Reddit traffic while being less than 1/10th the size community-wise.

Drew Curtis runs Fark.com in Kentucky and owns 100% of the company. Fark was self-funded and built entirely in-house. Drew has appeared on every major news outlet dozens of times each, and has done over 1,000 radio interviews to date. Fark.com is heavily watched by media outlets for story ideas, and as a result many of the eye-catching news stories of the week originate from there.

Previous speaking engagements include TED 2012 ("How I Beat a Patent Troll" - main conference at Long Beach), South By Southwest (2009, 2010, and 2011), multiple Poynter Institute symposiums, and Web 2.0 and assorted other social media conferences.

Drew is also the author of It's Not News It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News, possibly the only book in existence reviewed by both Dave Barry and Stephen King. He is also working on a book with Adam Savage titled “Don’t Give Guns To Robots” which is expected to be released in April 2018.

Drew is a co-collaborator on a beer with Stone Brewing Company founder Greg Koch and their mutual friend Wil Wheaton. Stone Farking Wheaton W00tstout was released nationwide in July 2013 and sold completely out within two weeks. It was ranked in the Top 20 New Beers of 2013, and the 5th annual batch is planned for 2017.

In Dec of 2012, Drew graduated from the prestigious Berkely Columbia Executive MBA program, receiving a degree from both Haas School of Business and Columbia Business School. Much to the chagrin of his entrepreneur friends, Drew found the experience to be both useful and interesting.

In January 2015, Drew filed to run for Governor of Kentucky in 2015 as an Independent candidate. His theory was that social media and other technological changes have made it possible to do so successfully without party support. He garnered 3.5% of the popular vote while spending $0, and participated in two candidate debates along the way.

In his spare time, Drew is an avid cyclist. He is also currently working on a few secret projects, including one to end patent trolls, upend the American political system (in a good way), and several other small startups among other things. He also has profound ADD in case that wasn’t obvious.