Past Member

Joseph Chung

Former Alumnus, Opera of the Future
  • Opera of the Future

MS 1989
Managing Director

Joseph left the MAS PhD program to co-found Art Technology Group with Jeet Singh. ATG started as a boutique technology / design firm, but "pivoted" to an full-out large scale e-commerce platform software company with over 1,200 employees. They took ATG public in 1999 and it was eventually acquired by Oracle in 2010 for $1b. Several Media Lab alums played crucial roles in the company including Nathan Abramson, Andy Hong, Fumi Matsumoto, and Grace Colby, with guest appearances by John Underkoffler, Tinsley Galyean, Marty Friedmann, and Eran Egozy, amongst others.

Since ATG, Joseph has founded several other companies, still in partnership with Jeet, out of Redstar Ventures, a startup foundry they created in 2010. Joseph still very much works in company creation, but also moonlights   in advising / supporting innovation for some larger groups including Eastern Bank, where he is a board director, and Fidelity Investments.

How did your experience at the Lab influence your next step?

My role as the technical leader of Tod's Hyperinstruments project taught me how to organize and run creative technology groups which was absolutely instrumental to building a software company. The Lab also taught me how to do effective presentations (back in the old demo-or-die days), which turns out to be an invaluable life skill! Lastly, the lab was just an incredible nexus of ideas, talent, and connections, and we can trace pretty much all of our early work directly to a lab contact.

Really take advantage of the network of fellow students there. Meet everyone and keep in touch with them!