Kim Taylor (entrepreneur)

Kim Taylor (born 1981 or 1982^[1]) is an American entrepreneur.^[1] She founded the online college manager company Ranku^[3] and the recruitment technology company Cluster, the latter of which she is serving as its CEO.^[4]

Kim Taylor
Born	1981 or 1982 (age 42–43)[1] Madison, Wisconsin, US[2]
Alma mater	Arizona State University
Occupation	Entrepreneur

Career

Taylor attended college at a Marquette University in Wisconsin, during which she spent a year as an NBA dancer with the Milwaukee Bucks which went to the East conference finals.^[5][6] She then transferred to Arizona State University to study journalism, during which she covered football games for The Arizona Republic. She graduated from Arizona State in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts,^[7][8] and continued working with The Arizona Republic.^[5]

In 2008, she was working with an online publisher in Chicago but started having interests in online education.^[5] In 2012, she joined the cast of entrepreneurs in the reality television series Start-Ups: Silicon Valley where she worked as an account manager and head of sales for Ampush Media.^[9] During the series, she quit Ampush and created a startup business called Shonova which focused on the fashion industry.^[10] However, Shonova lasted a few weeks before she gave that up.^[5]

In June 2013, Taylor joined Kaplan EdTech Accelerator, a partnership between Kaplan, Inc. and Techstars which hosts, mentors, and funds startup companies in education technology and product innovation for a three-month program in New York City.^[11][12] As part of joining EdTech, she co-founded with childhood friend Cecilia Retelle the online degree company Ranku and served as the Chief Executive Officer.^[13][14][15] She named it after the Japanese rending of the phrase rank. The goal of the company was to enable non-profit universities that offer online degrees to compete with the larger for-profit online degree companies such as University of Phoenix.^[16] Mark Cuban was the lead investor in Ranku.^[5][17] Business Insider named Taylor one of “Silicon Alley Top 100 Coolest People In New York Tech” in 2013.^[18] In 2016, Ranku was acquired by John Wiley & Sons.^[19]

Taylor founded the company Cluster, which aims to help job seekers in the manufacturing industry.^[4]