# Bobby Samuels

> Bobby Samuels is the New York-based co-founder and CEO of Protege, a marketplace and infrastructure company connecting owners of proprietary, real-world data with AI developers. His route to the job ran through The Harvard Crimson, LiveRamp, Bolt, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Datavant, giving him a career-long education in networks, data exchange, and the trust required to make difficult enterprise markets work.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at Protege
- **Organizations:** Protege, Datavant, Bolt, LiveRamp, The Harvard Crimson
- **Education:** MBA, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, AB in Economics, Harvard College
- **Known for:** Co-founded Protege and led it from public launch in 2024 to a reported $65 million in total funding by January 2026., Led Protege as it grew from roughly $1 million to $30 million in annual gross merchandise value, according to his Product Market Fit Show interview., Helped build Protege's network to roughly 250 data partners, according to the Product Market Fit Show episode description.

## Career timeline

- **2012** — Served as sports chair at The Harvard Crimson.
- **2013** — Served as president of The Harvard Crimson and helped oversee its responsive digital redesign.
- **2014-2016** — Worked at LiveRamp in special operations and technical partnerships.
- **2016-2018** — Completed an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
- **2019-2020** — Worked in business operations at Bolt.
- **2020-2023** — Held operating and leadership roles at Datavant, including General Manager of Privacy Hub.
- **2024** — Co-founded Protege and became CEO; the company publicly launched and raised a $10 million seed round.
- **2025** — Protege announced a $25 million Series A led by Footwork.
- **2026** — Protege announced a $30 million Series A extension led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing reported total funding to $65 million.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Protege and led it from public launch in 2024 to a reported $65 million in total funding by January 2026.
- Led Protege as it grew from roughly $1 million to $30 million in annual gross merchandise value, according to his Product Market Fit Show interview.
- Helped build Protege's network to roughly 250 data partners, according to the Product Market Fit Show episode description.
- Served as president of The Harvard Crimson and participated in its mobile-responsive digital redesign.
- Built experience in data connectivity and regulated exchange through leadership roles at LiveRamp and Datavant.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Commented publicly on Protege's partnership with VLGE to license real human behavioral data from virtual environments for AI development.
- **2026-04** — Discussed Protege's growth from about $1 million to $30 million in GMV and his founder-led enterprise sales playbook on The Product Market Fit Show.
- **2026-04** — Published Protege's expansion into spatial and physical intelligence data for robotics and world models.
- **2026-03** — Announced DataLab at Protege, a research institution focused on dataset design, curation, and evaluation.
- **2026-02** — Appeared on the a16z podcast to discuss real-world data, evaluation datasets, and expansion into video and audio.
- **2026-01** — Protege announced a $30 million Series A extension led by a16z, bringing reported total funding to $65 million.
- **2025-08** — Protege announced a $25 million Series A led by Footwork.

## Links

- Website: https://withprotege.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobby-samuels-9b38262b/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/BobbySamuels

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/bobby-samuels
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-28