Samir Arora

Samir Arora (born November 5, 1965) is an American businessman and former CEO of Mode Media (formerly Glam Media) from 2003 to April 2016. He was CEO and Chairman of the web design company NetObjects, Inc. from 1995 to 2001.

Samir Arora was born in New Delhi, India. He studied electrical and electronic engineering at Birla Institute of Technology and Science. Arora has an EMP from INSEAD, attended Executive Education at Harvard Business School, and holds a diploma in Sales and Marketing from the London Business School.

Samir Arora worked at Apple in Software and New Media from 1982 to 1991. Arora wrote a white paper called "Information Navigation: The Future of Computing" in late 1986 while working directly for the Chairman & CEO of Apple, John Sculley. He left Apple to found the spin-off Rae Technology from Apple.

From 1992 to 1995, Arora was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Rae Technology. In 1995 Samir Arora co-founded NetObjects, Inc. and together with a design and development team including David Kleinberg, Clement Mok and his brother, Sal Arora, created NetObjects Fusion, one of the first Web design products that allowed Web sites to be designed, structured and created without programming.

In 1997, after the launch of NetObjects Fusion, IBM invested approximately $100 million in a share exchange to buy 80% of NetObjects, corresponding to a valuation of around $150 million. NetObjects, Inc. went public on NASDAQ in 1999 with IBM staying the majority shareholder. From June 2003 to February 2004, Arora served as Chairman of the Board of Tickle, Inc., one of the first social networking sites founded in 1999. Tickle was acquired by Monster.com in May 2004.

In 2003, Mode Media (formerly Project Y and then Glam Media), Inc. was formed by a number of people including Arora. The company originally was founded as a website to offer fashion and beauty content and blog content. Mode Media was a digital lifestyle media company where content could be produced by anyone but was reviewed by professional editors prior to publishing.

Arora was the interim CEO of Glam Media from 2003 to 2005, and CEO from 2006 to March 2016. For his work at Mode Media, Arora was included by MIN Magazine in the The Digital Hot List 2008 and was named Web 2.0's Don Draper as one of the 30 men shaping our digital future by GQ MagazineMode Media grew from zero to $100 Million in revenue in its first 10 years and while preparing for its IPO, 2016 faced a power struggle between Hubert Burda Media against the group of Mode's Silicon Valley Investors Accel, DFJ, Marc Andreessen and founder Samir Arora in 2015 which resulted in Marc Andreessen and Samir Arora leaving the company.On 15 September 2016, while company was controlled by investor Hubert Burda Media, Mode Media US abruptly shut down its operations. Mode Media continued its operations in Japan and Asia and in January, 2017 announced that an investment group Montaro purchased Mode Media in Japan. On March, 2017, shareholders unanimously appointed Samir Arora as the Chairman of Mode Media Japan to help with it's turnaround, resulting in a successful six-week period of rebuilding Mode's technology and operations.

Since 2016, Samir Arora has been working on his Woodside Incubator and on a stealth startup.