People

Key Points: Netflix is a great example of a innovative tech company that was able to pivot successfully with changes in the entertainment industry. Hastings was able to sell his company Pure Atria and then turn that sale into his investment into co-founding Netflix. Netflix was a pioneer in niche of movie and show rentals. […]

Key Points: Zuckerberg has been one of the one most influential leaders of the tech industry in this century. Facebook has a track record of incorporating and absorbing other social media and tech companies into its fold to improve and reduce competition. Metaverse is where Facebook is taking its future endeavors with virtual realty. Who […]

Key Points: Horowitz has had a long history in the tech industry with success after success. He is widely recognized for his management expertise which he expressed through a few published books. Horowitz’s work history includes AOL, Loudcloud, Netscape, HP, and Opsware. Early Life Benjamin Abraham Horowitz was born in London, England on June 13, […]

Key Points: Andreessen has had a long history in the tech industry with success after success. He has been known to advise leaders of companies his firm has holdings with such as Facebook and Zynga. Andreessen’s work history includes Mosaic, Netscape, AOL, and Loudcloud/Opsware. Who is Marc Andreessen? Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, […]

Key Points: The initial premise of SnapChat was to have disappearing messages which would encourage privacy. SnapChat started as a class project called Picaboo. One of the defining features of SnapChat is its super fun filters. Evan Spiegel is the inventor of Snapchat and the founder of Snap Inc. Snap Inc. is a publicly-traded company […]

Key Points: Gordon Moore is responsible for “Moore’s Law,” a prediction that the number of transistors that would fit on a computer chip would double every year. Intel Corporation, the largest manufacturer of silicon microchips in the world, was cofounded by Moore in 1968, three years after his famous prediction. Gordon Moore is one of […]

Key Points Bobby Murphy was a co-founder of Snapchat. His parents were immigrants from the Philippines. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematical and computational science from Stanford. Early Life Childhood Bobby Murphy was born on July 19, 1988, in Berkeley, California. His mother was born and raised in the Philippines and emigrated […]

Key Points: Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press in Germany – a history-changing invention that made books widely accessible and began the “information revolution.” Gutenberg’s masterpiece, The Gutenberg Bible, was published around 1455 and was the first major book to be mass-produced in Europe. It was the beginning of the Western age […]

Key Points Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician born in 1918. She is most famous for her work in orbital mechanics at NASA. She helped to calculate the correct trajectories, launch windows, and return paths for the first manned spacecraft, the moon landing, and everything else from 1959 to 1986. Who was Katherine Johnson? Katherine […]

Key Points Mike Krieger is a Brazilian-American entrepreneur and software engineer who co-created Instagram. Mike began his career as a Program Intern Manager at Microsoft. Krieger also served as an Oral Communications Tutor and Advising Fellow for the Symbolic Systems Program while at Stanford. Who is Mike Krieger? Mike Krieger is a Brazilian-American entrepreneur and software […]

Key Points Kevin Systrom is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. Systrom conceptualized the foundation for what eventually became Instagram. Kevin not only founded Instagram, but he also worked at Google. Kevin Systrom is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He was born in Holliston, Massachusetts, and attended college at Stanford University. Kevin first interned […]

Key Points: Adi Shamir is known worldwide for his groundbreaking contributions to modern cryptography theory. Adi Shamir worked with fellow cryptographers Leonard Adleman and Ronald Rivest at MIT to solve public-key cryptography. In 1993, Shamir and Eli Biham co-authored, “Differential Cryptanalysis of the Data Encryption Standard,” which presented their discovery of differential cryptanalysis. Adi Shamir […]

Key Points With his brother John Knoll, Thomas Knoll created imaging processing subroutines which became software known as Display, ImagePro, and finally Photoshop. In 2019, both Thomas and John Knoll were awarded an Oscar for their software program Photoshop. Thomas Knoll’s most recent contributions to Photoshop include Camera Raw, Develop module for Adobe Lightroom, and […]

Key Points Jimmy Wales is best known as a co-founder of the famous online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wales was born in Hunstville, Alabama, graduated at 16, and went on to major in finance at Auburn University before getting his PhD at Indiana University. In 2017 Jimmy was one of five winners of the President’s Medal of […]

Key Points Larry Sanger is best known as the co-founder of Wikipedia, but he was also the original editor in chief of Nupedia. Citizendium was another project of Sanger’s that demanded all editors work under their real names, and they were required to be experts in their respective fields. The entire Wikipedia community was a […]

Key Points Charles Ranlett Flint was the primary founder of IBM, which became one of the largest businesses in the computer industry for decades to come. A saavy businessman, he enabled the joining of several chewing gum factories into the American Chicle Company in 1899, which produced Adams Chewing Gum, Chiclets, Dentyne, and Beemans. Published […]

Key Points: In 1982, Ron Rivest co-founded RSA, famous for its SecureID product which provides increased security for networks through public-key cryptography. Ron Rivest developed the Rivest Cipher or a “Ron Code,” an encryption algorithm. Multiple unique versions were produced. He co-authored the book “Introduction to Algorithms”, which covers a wide range of algorithms in […]

Key Points John Postel was one of the founding fathers of the Internet. Postel earned a Bachelor of Computer Science from UCLA in 1966, a Masters degree in Engineering in 1968, and a doctorate degree in Computing in 1974. He worked at ARPANET as a postgraduate research engineer before leaving to work at the MITRE […]

Key Points Simmons is an alumnus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. He joined PayPal as an engineer in 1999 eventually rising to the position of Chief Technology Officer. He left the company in 2003. He’s a member of the PayPal Mafia, a group of former PayPal […]

Key Points A graduate of Stanford University, Premal’s first degree was in Economics rather than in Computing unlike several of his peers. He would also go on to study microfinancing at the London School of Economics. Following his graduation, he worked at PayPal (after a brief period at Oliver Wyman) from 2000 to 2006 as […]

Key Points Yishan Wong is an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania which he attended between 1997 – 2001, graduating with a degree in Computer Science. He also happens to be a childhood friend of Jawed Karim, YouTube’s co-founder, who hired him as a senior engineering manager at PayPal, a role he held from […]

Key Points Jack Selby is best known for being a member of the PayPal Mafia, Paypal founders and employees who went on to found or fund other tech companies. While the amount is unknown, Selby make a fortune when Ebay purchased PayPal in 2002. His success with PayPal propelled his career as a film producer […]

Key Points Stoppelman has been a core member of some of the major technologies and apps of this century. He is one of people who is leading the charge against Google, claiming issues with them using monopolizing tactics. Stoppleman has worked and contributed with many of the great minds of Silicon Valley. Jeremy Stoppelman is […]

Key Points: Rabois has been involved and invested in some of most profitable tech companies over the past years, such as Clarium Capital, Khosla Ventures, and the Founders Fund, Opendoor, DoorDash, Scribed, and more! His big start came from being a key member of the PayPal Mafia. Another big role for him came as COO […]