Michael Gargiulo

Michael Joseph Gargiulo (October 19, 1991) is an American entrepreneur and technology contributor for Forbes. At 29-years-old, The Atlantan Magazine selected Michael as Atlanta’s Top Tech Entrepreneur of 2020. In 2017, he spent $976,630 to acquire the domain name VPN.com, which became the 7th most expensive domain name of the year. He founded CoolMathGames.com, a website now used by 17 million visitors, students and teachers, per month. He currently serves as the CEO of VPN.com, a company helping visitors find Virtual private network (VPN) security software and advocating against Internet censorship.
=== Early Life (1991 to 2010) ===
Gargiulo is an outspoken Christian from Atlanta, Georgia, where he continues to reside to this day. Gargiulo was a member of the Boy Scouts of America where he went on to earn the honor of Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America) in 2009. From 2006 to 2010, Gargiulo attended Brookwood High School (Snellville, Georgia). He was involved with Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA-PBL) as a Georgia FBLA State Officer. He went on to run for National President of the 250,000 member organization but was narrowly defeated by Mauricio Escobar in 2009. 
=== University (2010 to 2015) ===
Following high-school graduation, he attended the University of Georgia from 2010 to 2015, graduating cum laude with a double bachelors in Finance and Risk Management. During his collegiate career, Gargiulo was an athlete on the Georgia Bulldogs Cheerleading team and was also a member of the Phi Beta Lambda fraternity. In 2014 he was awarded 2nd place in UGA’s Next Top Entrepreneur, a competition to determine the top entrepreneur on campus.
=== Internet Security ===
In 2012, Gargiulo founded ProxyServer.com, a free web proxy service that allowed millions of visitors to change their IP address. In March 2017 he launched VPN.com to help visitors find the Virtual Private Network service suited for their devices and network.
On April 24th, 2018, he organized peaceful protests outside of Facebook’s offices in California as well as peaceful protests outside of the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C., protesting the lack of privacy on the platform and lack of congressional oversight over Facebook while the founder, Mark Zuckerberg, gave congressional testimony in a senate hearing over the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Under the banner of his current company, VPN.com, Gargiulo has advanced his support for Internet privacy rights by routinely publishing Open letter and speaking with elected officials. On November 26th of 2019, Gargiulo published a letter to President Donald Trump about terminating all Iranian Domain Names. In March, 2020 Gargiulo was featured on 11Alive to help Georgians prepare for fully remote work and Internet upgrades caused by COVID-19. On January 21st of 2021, Gargiulo issued an open letter and warning to incoming President Joe Biden about an alarming increase in recent American Censorship.
=== Domain Names ===
Gargiulo has been using domain names to grow his various brands. Since purchasing one of the top 10 most expensive domain names in 2017, Gargiulo was keynote speaker at NamesCon, the largest domain conference in the world and owned by GoDaddy.
While at VPN.com, he assisted other entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes, and musicians acquire their name. On January 11, 2021, Gargiulo assisted Louisiana State University acquire LSUTigers.com.
In 2018, Gargiulo assisted Representative Colton Moore and Governor Brian Kemp in acquiring BrianKemp.com. In 2020, Gargiulo brokered GeorgiaRunoff.com during the most expensive runoff in Georgia history.
Category:1991 births
Category:American Christians
Category:Businesspeople in software
Category:University of Georgia alumni
Category:People from Gwinnett County, Georgia