Who is Scott Banister? | Investments, Net worth

Highlights

• Scott co-founded IronPort, a company known for combating spam. In 2007, Cisco Systems acquired IronPort for $830 million.

• He revolutionized online advertising by creating paid search advertising through keyword auctions. 

Let’s take a look into Scott Banister’s life, net worth, and investments.

Who is Scott Banister?

Scott Banister is an entrepreneurial whiz and startup genius. He co-founded IronPort Systems, where he was the Director of Technology. He also founded Zivity and acted as its Chairman. 

Early Life

Banister is a native of Kansas City, Missouri, born in 1975 to parents, Debbie and the late Bruce Banister, who was a civil engineer. Banister’s fascination with technology made him develop a keen interest in web development.

Banister attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where he studied  computer science.

Family

Scott Banister lives in Half Moon Bay with wife Cyan Bannister.

Career

Scott Banister’s IronPort began its journey during the tech crash, but quickly became the leading provider of email management and anti-spam solutions for enterprises. In 2007, Cisco Systems acquired IronPort for $830 million.

Scott is one of the early investors in PayPal, where he served as Director. He was instrumental in creating the widely utilized ’email payments’ feature on eBay.

Scott was also a Board Member of the popular service, PostMates and shares his wealth of knowledge and experience as an Advisor at SignalFire.

He clocked some time at Idealab! as their VP of Ideas. There, he came up with the bid-for-placement search engine model, a key element that drives Overture.

Banister didn’t shy away from starting his ventures either. He launched Zivity, an adult-themed social networking platform, alongside his wife, Cyan Banister, and Jeffrey Wescott.

Investments

Scott Banister has quite the portfolio, having poured funds into 146 ventures. His most recent backing was a Seed Round for a company called Together.

Banister has gained valuable experience as an investor and board member for several startups over the years, including eVoice..

He didn’t stop there. His portfolio of private equity investments includes big names like Uber, Zappos.com, LiveOps, Facebook, Hi5.com, Tagged.com, iLike, Causes.com, Topsy Labs, Teleport, Inc., and TekTrak.

Net Worth

Scott Banister’s worth is around $5 million.

Quotes from Scott Banister

• “Anytime the financial markets get shaky, then people have a tendency to want to retreat to cash”

• “What we were doing at Zivity is absolutely about freedom”

• “Politeness is the enemy of freshness”

• “If entrepreneurs were running schools, instead of bureaucrats, schools would be teaching”