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I remember articles from when he was hired about how his last big leadership role was running a World of Warcraft guild

• pmoriarty 7y ago
  In my own memory, at the time Ito was best known for having a gee-whiz style tech blog. Then for some reason he got hired to manage MIT's Media Lab -- a real head scratcher.
  • freyr 7y ago
    You're both right, here's his blog entry on leadership in World of Warcraft: https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2006/03/13/leadership-in-w.html https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2006/03/13/leadership-in-w.html I'd guess by this point, he'd already made some money as a tech founder and CEO in Japan. He was apparently an early investor in Twitter, which was founded eight days after he wrote this blog post.
  • gojomo 7y ago
    Among other things, before joining the Media Lab, Ito had served on the boards of the Mozilla Foundation and Creative Commons (where he was also Chairman of the Board).
  • joewee 7y ago
    Joi was a behind the scenes player in a lot of successful Valley startups. Once someone reaches investor level it’s impossible to fully understand where their wealth is generated because it tends to be diversified. But he was a very well connected and respected technologist and investor who pretty much pursued whatever his interest were at any given moment, read his blog and you’ll see that it was pretty diverse.