Ernesto Schmitt | |
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| Born | August 1971 (age 53) |
| Nationality | German, Uruguayan |
| Citizenship | American, German |
| Alma mater | Churchill College, Cambridge (MEng) INSEAD (MBA) |
| Occupation(s) | Investor Entrepreneur |
| Known for | The Craftory, Beamly DriveTribe, Fabula AI, Silverscreen, Peoplesound |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | see relatives |
Ernesto Gottfried Schmitt (born August 1971) is an American-born entrepreneur and investor. A founder of PeopleSound, Beamly and DriveTribe, he also founded venture capital fund The Craftory, with a $600m first fund for consumer goods challenger brands.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a German father and Uruguayan mother, Schmitt was raised in Brussels and Mexico. He attended Churchill College, Cambridge, where he received an MA in manufacturing engineering, later attaining an MBA from INSEAD. During the dot-com boom, Schmitt founded PeopleSound, the first platform for digital music streaming, which was backed pre-IPO by Bernard Arnault. Seen as one of the highest profile new-age internet startups, it was exited to Vitaminic in 2001 and listed.
Schmitt also founded Beamly, which pioneered social television, and was backed by HBO and Comcast before being acquired by S&P 500 component Coty, Inc., as well as social media platform DriveTribe alongside Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson. Other notable involvements include co-founding deep-learning company Fabula AI, acquired by Twitter in June 2019.