Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

Founder Friday with Jon Carson

The Blank Center’s Founder Friday series is continuing this week with Jon Carson ’79!

Jon Carson

Jon Carson ’79

Jon is the founder of BiddingForGood (BFG) which created an entirely new category of shopping, charitable commerce. BFG changed the way charity auction events are run, helping to raise over $300m for worthy causes while creating a charitable commerce marketplace with $60m of annual merchandising sales. Bidding for Good was acquired by FrontStream in July 2015.

Jon is a serial entrepreneur, having started four companies with over $250 million of returns to investors. He has over 20 years in building and scaling for profit enterprises that serve a broader social purpose. Other than brief stints at Boeing and McKinsey & Company, he has always worked on new ventures. Prior to BFG, Jon founded Family Education Network, using a unique public/private partnership model to become the largest education website on the Internet. Over 20% of all U.S. school districts built their first website on the FEN platform. In 2000 FamilyEducation Network was acquired by Pearson Plc in an all cash transaction.

Jon is currently on the board of Taunton Press, a midsized specialty publisher of magazines, books, TV, and websites (Fine Cooking, Threads, Fine Woodworking, Fine Gardening, Fine Homebuilding) and The Lewis Institute at Babson College. He is also a participant in Renaissance Weekend and holds a deep interest in sustainability and equilibrium dynamics in political and economic systems as well as an interest in social entrepreneurship.

In 2008, Jon was one of the initial 3 inductees into the Babson College Alumni Entrepreneur Hall of Fame. In 2009 he was a finalist for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (New England region). In 2015 he was featured in the book “INSIGHTS; Reflections from 101 of Yale’s Most Successful Entrepreneurs.”

Jon is a graduate of Babson College and the Yale School of Management.

See you Friday, March 4 at 11am at the Blank Center!

What are Founder Fridays?
Founder Fridays, hosted by the Blank Center, is where you will get to meet some of the most interesting founders, who will share their ups and downs, their mistakes and celebrations – all with #nofilter. Open and brutally honest, these founders will tell their real deal life experience of creating a startup.