People

President & CEO

Group Partners

Visiting Group Partners

  • Rich Aberman
    Rich Aberman was co-founder of WePay (YC S09), a payments API for B2B SaaS and point-of-sale platforms. As Chief Product and Strategy Officer, he helped raise $75M in venture capital, grow the company to 300 employees, and achieve profitability before being acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2018. He holds a degree in economics, political science, and philosophy from Boston College.
  • Wayne Crosby
    Wayne Crosby was the co-founder of Zenter (W07), the collaborative presentation product that was acquired by Google and turned into Google Slides. Wayne also founded Humu, a product that uses behavioral science and machine learning to help teams at large enterprises achieve greater happiness and better performance, and OrgOrg, which builds tools to help small businesses and organizations run more efficiently.
  • Umur Cubukcu
    Umur Cubukcu was the co-founder and CEO of Citus Data (S11), the creators of the distributed PostgreSQL database Citus. Citus Data was acquired in 2019 by Microsoft, where he spent nearly four years leading the PostgreSQL product team at Azure. He received his MS from Stanford University.
  • Pete Koomen
    Pete Koomen co-founded Optimizely (W10) which helps companies run experiments on their websites and apps. He helped Optimizely grow from inception, to $100M+ in ARR to, ultimately, its acquisition in 2020. Pete holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
  • David Lieb
    David Lieb was previously the co-founder and CEO of Bump (S09), which was acquired by Google in 2013 and evolved into what is now Google Photos. Before Bump, Dave was a researcher in the Stanford AI Lab and a software engineer at Texas Instruments. He holds EE/CS degrees from Princeton and Stanford and finished ½ an MBA at Chicago Booth before dropping out to start Bump.
  • Emmett Shear
    Emmett Shear was co-founder and CEO of Twitch, the massively popular live streaming service that began its life as Justin.tv (W07). Twitch was acquired by Amazon in 2014, with Emmett staying on as Twitch’s CEO until he stepped away from the role in 2023. He graduated from Yale University in 2005 with a degree in computer science.

Founders

  • Trevor Blackwell
    Founder, Retired
    Trevor Blackwell is a roboticist who in 2007 built the first dynamically balancing [biped robot](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_CQ5AKaEi3U). He has published papers on congestion control in high speed wide area networks, signalling protocol architecture, and file system performance. He has a BEng from Carleton, and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.
  • Paul Graham
    Founder, Retired
    Paul Graham is the author of [On Lisp](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130305529/) (1993), [ANSI Common Lisp](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0133708756/) (1995), and [Hackers & Painters](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596006624/) (2004). In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb, the first SaaS company, which in 1998 [became](http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release184.html) Yahoo Store. In 2002 he discovered a simple spam filtering algorithm that inspired the current generation of filters. He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.
  • Jessica Livingston
    Founder, Retired
    Jessica Livingston was previously VP of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness, where she managed an award-winning rebranding of the company. She is the author of [Founders at Work](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597141) (2007), a book of interviews with startup founders. She has a BA in English from Bucknell.
  • Robert Morris
    Founder, Retired
    Robert Morris is a professor of computer science at MIT, where he is a member of the [PDOS](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/) group. He has published extensively on wireless networks, distributed operating systems, and peer-to-peer applications. In 1988 his discovery of buffer overflow first brought the Internet to the attention of the general public. He has an AB and PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.

Batch

  • Elizabeth Akman
    Batch Director
  • Lindsay Selvitelle
    Director of Events

Application Operations

  • Eve Bouffard
    Application Operations, Associate
  • Sean Pennino
    Product Engineer

Software

  • Regan Bell
    Product Engineer
  • Doug Duhaime
    Product Engineer
  • Josh France
    Product Engineer
  • Jared Hobbs
    Product Engineer
  • Zach Kamran
    Product Engineer
  • Casey Muller
    Product Engineer
  • Oliver Ortlieb
    Product Engineer
  • Mark Thurman
    Head of Infrastructure and Security

Post Batch

  • Jon Levy
    Managing Director, Partnerships
  • Ryan Choi
    Head of Alumni Relations
  • Arnav Sahu
    Principal
  • Chris Simon
    Data & Community Analyst
  • Frank Stratton
    Product Engineer
  • Eric Bakan
    Head of Data

Pre Batch

  • Katherine Bernstein
    Product Engineer
  • Joan DeGennaro
    Operations Manager
  • Catheryn Li
    Product Lead
  • Raymond Li
    Product Engineer

Legal

  • Joseph Borges-Santos
    Legal Analyst
  • Nicole Cadman
    General Counsel, Early Stage
  • Otice Carder
    Legal Analyst
  • Mitch Duncombe
    Legal Counsel
  • Gaby Kapp
    Legal Counsel
  • Carolynn Levy
    Managing Director, Legal and People Ops
  • Brigid McCurdy
    Senior Legal Counsel
  • Nick McMullan
    Legal Analyst
  • Micah Morgan
    Legal Analyst
  • Alex Petersen
    Senior Legal Counsel
  • Angela Prochnow
    Legal Operations & Innovation Program Manager
  • Tommy Szalasny
    Legal Counsel
  • Tasnim Thakur
    Legal Analyst
  • Shirley Truy
    Legal Operations Specialist

Finance

  • Celia Cheung
    Senior Controller
  • Logan Clayson
    Senior Fund Accountant
  • Trevor Goddard
    Senior Fund Accountant
  • Ani Kochiashvili
    Finance Technology Lead
  • Irina Lukashuk
    Business Analyst
  • Emily Manashi
    Accounting Manager
  • Eliana Moorer
    Finance Coordinator
  • Kirsty Nathoo
    Managing Director, Finance
  • Yna Ortega
    Fund Accounting Manager
  • Verena Prescher
    Senior Director of Finance
  • Esther Schwyter
    Fund Account Manager
  • Anji Song
    Fund Controller
  • Shaun Weber
    Director of Tax
  • Shellie Wong
    Fund Accounting Manager

Outreach

  • Lindsay Amos
    Senior Director of Communications
  • Zach Both
    Video and Content Lead
  • Greg Kumparak
    Editorial Content Manager
  • Kat Mañalac
    Managing Outreach Officer
  • Ryan Loughlin
    Senior Video Producer
  • Steven Pham
    Online Community Director

People Ops

  • Renée Beck
    Chief of Staff
  • Adele Gower
    Operations Manager
  • Renee Mars
    Director of People Operations
  • Sophia Mayol
    Office Manager
  • Tatyana Veremyova
    Director of Payroll & Benefits
  • Julie Swan
    Business Operations

Hacker News

  • Daniel Gackle
    Hacker News