Started in March of 2006 by three UF undergrads, Joshua Greenberg, Sam Tarantino and Andrés Barreto, Grooveshark, the music streaming service, has been accredited with sparking the music streaming revolution. At its peak the site had up to 40 million users a month and 145 employees, occupying most of the second floor of the Union Street Station in downtown Gainesville and a small office in New York City. While its doors officially closed in 2015, the impact the company had in further developing the economic opportunities in the area and in regions across the country have been widely felt. While some of the talented people behind the site have gone on to accomplish great things, they can all trace their roots back to Greater Gainesville.
Partender – Former intern, now founder and CEO, Nik Kundra, started Partender in 2011 in order to reduce the times it takes owners and managers to complete bar inventory.
Intuit – The now Senior Ineraction/Visiual Designer, Rongfei Geng, got his start at Grooveshark in 2013.
Yelp – Past VP of Global Business Development for Grooveshark, Josh Bonnain is now a business development manager for the famous app.
Jane.com – Former Senior Art Director, Alex Estrada went on to work for major companies such as Birchbox and Asana, currently working at clothing and fashion site, Jane.com.
Pulselocker –The music subscription service for DJ’s is now home to Scott Ogle, a current Software Engineer, formerly a member of the Grooveshark team.
IBM – A former developer at Grooveshark, Matt Brothers now works at IBM as an Advisory Designer.
Chromatic FM – Founded by former CEO and co-founder of Grooveshark, Sam Tarantino, Chromatic FM is a personal radio to play and listen to new music broadcasted by real people in real time.
Admiral – Founded by James Hartig, Nathan Hagen, Will Richardson and Brian Picciano, Admiral offers its solutions to online publishers to recover revenue lost from ad-blocking software that users install to avoid advertising. The team is home to 10 former Grooveshark employees with Dan Rua as its current CEO.
MaidSuite – Started by Joshua Greenberg and Kristen Hadeed, MaidSuite is an online scheduling application for cleaning companies and other service providers.
Onswipe – Founded by former co-founder of Grooveshark, Andres Barreto, Onswipe is a New York-based tablet publishing company that creates customized mobile sites for web publishers. The company has raised over $6 million in venture-capital funding.
Planned Parenthood – Her time as Senior Product Marketing Manager led Hannah Pyper to becoming a Marketing Strategist for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
BuzzFeed – Kristin Harris, the current Celebrity Editor for BuzzFeed, was formerly the Social Media Coordinator with Grooveshark.
Dropbox – Former CIO turned SRE Manager, Colin Hostert now works for the file hosting service, Dropbox.
TapShield – Co-founded by former CTO, Joshua Greenberg. TapShield allows users of the company’s mobile application to alert emergency responders and authorities about criminal activities via mobile devices.
The Academy of Music Production – Now CEO, Angelo Carretta got his start as Grooveshark’s Senior Audio Engineer.