Mark Chasan

Mark Chasan was born in Los Angeles, California, to Fred Chasan, a medical doctor,[9] and Roslyn "Roz" Chasan (née Lefkowitz),[10] an attorney.[11] His brothers are Jeff Chasan and Paul Chasan.[12] At age 10, Mark started playing drums and became a professional musician at age 14. He worked his way through college playing music and as a studio drummer. In 1985 he graduated from the College of Law at Western State University and became a lawyer[2] in Los Angeles.

In 1985 Chasan opened his law practice in Los Angeles, running it until 1995 when he founded eMusic,[13] the world's first online digital music distribution[14] and media streaming company.[15] Due to the rapid growth of eMusic, Chasan founded one of the first cloud co-hosting, and co-location facilities known as Webcentral[16] to serve the increasing computing demands.[6] Webcentral continued to add customers, eventually providing cloud hosting services to Caltrans, Re/Max, and AudioNet/Broadcast.com. In 1997, Webcentral was acquired by Interworld Communications and in 1999 Chasan merged eMusic with Goodnoise, Inc. to form eMusic.com in a transaction ultimately taking the company public on the Nasdaq, trading under the symbol EMUS.[5]

After eMusic's initial public offering and Webcentral's acquisition, Chasan became a professional angel investor[17] and leader in IBM's digital media consulting division. Later, he co-founded a technology fund, Publex Ventures,[1] which specialized in accelerating the growth of early-stage companies with public exits.

After exiting Publex Ventures, Chasan founded Transformative in 2005, a consulting company designed to help build eco-social impact businesses,[18] and AWE Global, a development company for sustainable communities.[19][20][21][22][4]

Chasan has appeared regularly in media publications such as Billboard,[23] HuffPost[24] and Planetary Experts[25] as well as spoken at conferences such as BTOES,[26] UNR,[27] Sustainatopia,[18] and Clean Tech Innovation & Growth[28] on topics ranging from cleantech, renewable energy, agroforestry, digital media, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain to natural capital, regenerative economy, and entrepreneurship.

• eMusic