William T. Gross

Founder and Chairman, idealab
Co-Founder and CEO, ProRata.ai

Bill is Co-founder and CEO of ProRata.ai. He’s also Founder and Chairman of Idealab Studio, a leading technology incubator. Over the last 28 years, Idealab has created and operated more than 150 companies and had more than 50 successful IPOs and acquisitions.

Amazed by the inventions of Thomas Edison and Leonardo da Vinci, Bill Gross grew up dreaming of being an inventor. He started his first company – Solar Devices – in high school during the energy crisis of 1973 with a dream of making solar energy practical on a small scale. In 1996, filled with ideas, Bill decided to start his dream laboratory – a company “incubator” – modeled after Edison’s lab. Named Idealab, the company’s mission is to challenge the status quo, to be bold, and to tackle big ideas that others would not.

Among the transformative changes that Bill has wrought is the invention of the business model that powers most of the monetization of the internet. Bill invented the “paid click”, or CPC (cost-per-click) model with the company GoTo/Overture, which he founded in 1998. After a successful IPO and becoming the global market leader in paid search, the company was acquired by Yahoo in 2003. Today, Bill’s pioneering idea is used by millions of websites around the world and remains one of his most significantly impactful inventions.

In addition to serving as Idealab’s board chairman and the CEO of ProRata.ai, Bill is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology and of ArtCenter College of Design.