Alma mater Stanford University Education Stanford University | Website www.smule.com Organization Smule | |
Occupation Co-founder and CEO of Smule Notable work Thesis: Correlation analyses of encoded music performance, 2013 | ||
Jeffrey Christopher “Jeff” Smith is an American entrepreneur based out of San Francisco, CA. He is the co-founder and CEO of Smule, a developer of apps and a social platform for music creation and collaboration.
Smith began his career as a software engineer at IBM’s Scientific Research Center and has held senior roles at several technology companies, including Frame Technology, Ashton-Tate, and Hewlett-Packard. Subsequently, Smith co-founded a consumer electronic publishing business that he sold to Novell/WordPerfect.
Smith co-founded his second company, Tumbleweed Communications in 1992. Tumbleweed attracted well-known partners and customers, notably Datek Online Holdings, UPS, Pitney Bowes, Chase Manhattan Bank, and the U.S. Postal Service. As CEO, Smith grew the company to several thousand customers, and eventually took it public on the Nasdaq ('TMWD’).
Smith co-founded a third company, Simplify Media, where he served on the board. Simplify Media was eventually acquired by Google, and Smith set off to pursue a Ph.D in Computer Music at Stanford University. He actually co-founded Smule while pursuing his Ph.D.
In 2013, Smith completed his Ph.D. with the thesis “Correlation analyses of encoded music performance”, where he documented cultural differences of music performance interpretation. He is now also an Assistant Consulting Professor at Stanford's Department of Music. Smith previously received a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford and has co-authored twenty-seven patents.