# Sebastian Cwilich

> Sebastian Cwilich is the founder and CEO of Tertulia, a book-discovery company that uses machine learning to surface the books people are actually talking about online. An Argentine-born physicist who spent years at AT&T Labs before reinventing himself in the art market, he co-founded Artsy and built it into the world's largest online fine-art marketplace as its president and COO. With Tertulia he set out to do for books what Artsy did for art: turn scattered conversation into discovery. The company launched in 2022 with $6M in seed funding led by AlleyCorp and, by 2025, pivoted toward author services with a popular automated website builder.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Tertulia
- **Organizations:** Tertulia, Artsy, Gagosian, Aleph Partners, Christie's, AT&T Labs, Haunch of Venison
- **From:** Argentina
- **Nationality:** Argentine-American
- **Education:** BA, double major in Mathematics and Spanish Language & Literature, Columbia University, Graduate coursework in operations research and applied mathematics, Columbia University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Artsy and helped build it into the world's largest online fine-art marketplace, Pioneered Artsy's gallery-subscription model (instead of sales commissions) and remote live-auction bidding, Remained Artsy's second-largest individual shareholder after stepping down in 2019

## Career timeline

- **1997-2004** — Senior Technical Staff Member at AT&T Labs
- **2007-2009** — VP, Commercial & Business Director at Christie's; built the business plan for its private sales division
- **2010** — Co-founded Artsy
- **2010-2012** — Partner at Aleph Partners
- **2010-2019** — President and COO of Artsy; grew it into the world's largest online fine-art marketplace
- **2019-2020** — Senior Advisor at Gagosian
- **2022** — Launched Tertulia on iOS (June 7) with $6M seed funding led by AlleyCorp
- **2025** — Expanded Tertulia into author services with an automated website builder

## Achievements

- Co-founded Artsy and helped build it into the world's largest online fine-art marketplace
- Pioneered Artsy's gallery-subscription model (instead of sales commissions) and remote live-auction bidding
- Remained Artsy's second-largest individual shareholder after stepping down in 2019
- Raised over $6M in seed funding for Tertulia from AlleyCorp, Canvas Ventures and FJ Labs
- Built Tertulia's author website-builder to 10,000+ accounts and 3,500+ paying subscribers within months of beta

## Latest updates

- **2025-04** — Tertulia beta-launched an automated author website builder that generates a full author site from a single ISBN.
- **2025** — Tertulia For Authors reached 10,000+ accounts and 3,500+ paying subscribers, with a 35-40% free-to-paid conversion rate.

## Links

- Website: https://tertulia.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastiancwilich
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/scwilich

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/sebastian-cwilich
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-21