Rufus Griscom is a Web entrepreneur and the founder of highbrow smut site Nerve.com as well as Babble.com, which is targeted to hipster parents.

Born in Manhattan, Griscom attended Brown and started his career in publishing. He met future girlfriend and business partner, Genevieve Field, when they were editors at Cader Books in the mid-'90s. In 1997, he and Field founded Nerve.com, which billed itself as a site for "literate smut." The couple broke up after the site launched but they maintained their business relationship for years afterward (even after Griscom hired his new girlfriend to work at the company), and the mildly racy site soon gained attention for its provocative fare and roster of well-known contributors such as Spalding Gray, Rick Moody, Naomi Wolf, and Norman Mailer. Nerve raised several million in financing in the waning days of the dotcom era, but dreams of multi-million dollar paydays evaporated when the market crashed. But unlike so many other start-ups, Nerve managed to stay in business, mostly due to the subscriptions to its successful personals business. In 2007, Griscom founded Material Media, which now serves as the parent company of Nerve as well as a new property, Babble.com. Reflecting Griscom's own transition from young, swinging single to married man with a kid, the online magazine brings an irreverent attitude to the subject of parenting.

Griscom is married to Alisa Volkman, Nerve.com's VP of advertising and Babble.com's co-publisher. They have two children and live in Tribeca.

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