- Studied advertising and computer science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduates in 2011
- Y Combinator alumni from the Summer 2009 batch; cofounded GraffitiGeo, which was later acquired by Loopt in 2009.
- First Silicon Valley experience was joining TokBox as employee #1 during sophomore year (2007). Later worked at One Llama and Illinois Ventures. Started 2 UIUC student entrepreneur groups: UBD (an ACM SIG) and IEN.
- Proud owner of github.com/god although unfortunately doesn’t possess any supernatural powers
- Enjoys designing and coding
- Total sucker for gaming (Protoss ftw). I’m a Huskateer.
- Favorite side project is Hacker News Directory, where students can find other students from their schools who read Hacker News.
- Maintains a personal blog at posterous
- Has an awesome girlfriend who is equally nerdy and sells handmade jewelry on Etsy.
Book stats overview
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- 33 total companies interviewed
- Companies have collectively raised $90 million
- 60% of companies interviewed are funded by Y Combinator, which represents 8% of all Y Combinator companies as of 2011 (20 total)
- 63% founders are programmers (21)
- 30% of founders are tagged as ‘businessperson‘ meaning they most likely aren’t programmers or writing code
- 18% of founders are designers (6)
- 18% of companies are acquired, or founders have had previously acquired companies before their current startup (6)
- 24% of founders worked jobs to generate income while they were in school (8)
- 45% of founders started their startups as undergraduate students
- 67% of companies are hiring (22)
- 21% of founders are dropouts (7)
- 42% of founders are profitable, either Ramen profitable or profitable enough to pay salaries and cover business expenses (14)
- 76% of founders are funded, either VC funded or received funding from angels (Y Combinator seed funding is not counted in this figure) (25)
- 6% of founders attended an Ivy League school (2)
- 27% of founders are major league players, so most of them are within the top 1,000 ranked sites by traffic in the U.S. according to Alexa (9)
- 24% of founders were coincidental, meaning they had no idea they would be starting a startup (9)
- Only 2 founders are solo founders
