About

James Roven is a serial founder, creator and innovator with a track record of building and successfully exiting technology projects and companies.

Roven began his career co-founding the award-winning Silicon Alley digital agency Blue Hypermedia, where he served as Creative Director. His work in creative and art direction included major brands such as The New York Times, MasterCard, Kahlua and SciFi Channel. This work earned him dozens of international awards, including a Gold from the prestigious One Show. After 5 years of rapid growth, Microforum (MCF.TO) acquired the agency for US $14 million.

Additional entrepreneurial successes also include the international accessories brand J.FOLD (Roven sold his equity in 2008), the anti-adblock technology BlockAdblock, which was acquired in 2017, and the popular esoteric entertainment site iFate, which serves over 3 million pageviews monthly today.

Roven entered the AI space in 2018 with the launch of Wordmetrics, one of the early SaaS platforms to apply machine-learning to search engine optimization. Wordmetrics has powered over 2,300 B2B subscribers, including Publicis, Shiseido, Zoopla, and Westin Hotels.

Most recently, serving as Chief Strategy Officer at FRAIA AI, he guided corporate strategy and managed 2nd round capital raising initiatives and SAFE agreements for a Danish / Thai technology company. At FRAIA, Roven also developed a customized artificial intelligence chat for the Thai marketplace.

Today, Roven is deep in development on Brandsafe, an artificial intelligence platform designed to boost publisher advertising revenue — and his fourth venture in the MediaTech category.

Roven studied both studio art and computer science (Pascal, back then!) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he attended on a music scholarship. A cellist, Roven has recorded on multiple albums and performed internationally supporting major-label recording artists. He has also exhibited his artwork in several New York galleries.

A native New Yorker, Roven has lived full-time in Bangkok since 2010 and speaks Thai conversationally.