Thor Muller is coauthor with Lane Becker of Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business (Jossey-Bass). Thor’s trysts with serendipity began over 15 years ago, when he started out as a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating success stories for Yahoo!, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, and more. He founded and ran one of the early Web development boutiques, Prophet Communications, along with several other trailblazers, including Trapezo (Web software for syndicating content), Rubyred Labs (a San Francisco-based web apps firm), and of course, Get Satisfaction, the people-powered customer service engine he co-founded with co-author Lane Becker.
Thor Muller founds and advises startups that make a difference to real people. He’s a Web pioneer who bridges design and technology, and a true believer in social entrepreneurship.
Since 1995 he has founded five companies, and launched over two dozen web applications and sites. His startups have criss-crossed genres, from online serial entertainment, to content syndication networks, to e-commerce as performance art, to reinventing the idea of customer service from the outside in. His businesses aim to use online networks to blur the line between work and play, explode the boundaries of organizations and conventional thinking. He pulls inspiration from everywhere: music and film, creating writing, evolutionary biology, world history, systems theory. Over his career he and his companies have been featured in New York Times, TechCrunch, Wall St Journal, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek, Business 2.0, CNET. Thor studied Film an English Literature at University of Iowa and University of London.
He is a regular invited speaker at conferences, Global 500 companies, and universities, where he talks about entrepreneurship, cooperative games, customer community, online identity and reputation, and how technology is changing us. You may have seen him present at SXSW Interactive, Webvisions, Future of Web Apps, Web 2.0 Expo, ETech, Gov 2.0, Startonomics, Freemium Summit, Google, Dreamforce, UCBerkeley, or University of Sydney. He can be reached at
