Tim Westergren
| Tim Westergren | |
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| File:Tim Westergren David Shankbone 2010 NYC.jpg
Westergren at the 2010 Time 100 Gala
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| Born | Timothy Brooks Westergren December 21, 1965 Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| Occupation | co-founder of Pandora Radio |
Timothy Brooks "Tim" Westergren (born December 21, 1965 in Minneapolis, Minnesota), is a co-founder of Pandora Radio.[1]
Biography
Westergren was born in 1965 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 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]
