Bill Townsend


Bill Townsend is an entrepreneur who helped create and build several global companies, most notably search engine Lycos, social networking pioneer sixdegrees.com, whose intellectual property formed the basis of LinkedIn, GeoCities and Deja.com. Townsend cofounded RevolutionSports, a television and event production company, with the late Roddy Piper and Shane Douglas. He is President & CEO of TRICCAR, Inc., a publicly-held bioceutical research and development company focused on pharmaceutical and bioceutical solutions to common diseases.

Career

Townsend has founded, co-founded or served on the executive management team or board of directors at several global biomedicine, nutraceutical, Internet, and technology companies, most notably TRICCAR, Inc., a publicly-held bioceutical firm focused on bioceutical and pharmaceutical research, development and marketing, where he serves as President and Chief Executive Officer and Internet search engine Lycos, acquired by Terra Networks the Internet arm of the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, for $12.5 billion.
Townsend served on the Board of Directors of $2.8 billion Newegg.com, the second largest pureplay e-commerce retailer behind Amazon and oversaw the company's global marketplace division and that division's growth to over $280 million. He previously served on the boards of IAB, PacAirVentures, ReallyEasyInternet, and Futuristics.net.

Publications

Townsend, and co-author Gary Carini, Associate Dean at Baylor University, were published in Harvard Business Review on the subject employee entrepreneurship. Townsend was also featured in Wooster Magazine in 2015.

Education

Townsend earned an MBA from Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business where he held the John Schoen Entrepreneur-in-Residence chair and lectured on leadership and entrepreneurship. He earned his BA at The College of Wooster and also studied at Washington & Jefferson College and SDA Bocconi.

Philanthropy

In 2000, Townsend founded The Amati Foundation, to help expand the stringed arts, specifically education in playing, making, and preserving the violin.
Townsend began studying violin making under the tutelage of Ziang Mei then continued learning techniques from William Hilton, and Alberti Genduso. In 2005 he introduced a wood treatment system to increase sonority and harmonics in instrument making. This system, Il Cremonese Violin Treatments, matched the ground used by Antonio Stradivari on which to apply varnish and protect wood. One of his instruments was featured in The Smithsonian Institution's Heart & Hands exhibition about musical instruments and their makers. He donates 50% of his instrument sales to charity.
Townsend is the son of Jacquelyn Mayer, Miss America 1963, and contributes time and funding to women's education and empowerment causes.

Politics

Townsend was the 1992 Republican candidate for United States Congress in Pennsylvania's 20th Congressional District, narrowly losing by 1½% to 16-year Democrat incumbent Austin Murphy.