He devised workarounds to UIUC rules, including an audacious scheme in which he created a company, hired himself as an intern, then used the internship to earn course credit.
"[4] Computerworld reported that Banister got his first idea to capitalize on existing search engine workhorses to help retailers advertise their presence on the Web.
[5] In the summer of 1995, while still attending University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Banister cofounded SponsorNet New Media, Inc., with friends, fellow students Max Levchin and Luke Nosek.
[3] He left college during his sophomore year in 1996 to cofound Submit It!, the free, automated resource to advertise on multiple search engines.
[12] Banister has worked with other start-ups as a board member and investor, including eVoice, the first email-enabled home voicemail service acquired by AOL in 2001.
He served as VP of Ideas at idealab!, where he contributed the unique bid-for-placement search engine model that powers Overture.
[3] In a 2019 VentureBeat article, Andrew Ganato and Scy Yoon wrote that Peter Thiel and Scott Banister had been the most prolific investors, each responsible for investing in more than 100 companies.
[17] In that article, Ganato and Yoon provide a net graph showing the interconnections among PayPal Mafia members' investments.
[24] Jessi Hempel of Wired wrote that they "won TechCrunch's Angel of the Year award last spring for prescient bets on SpaceX, Uber, and DeepMind Technologies".