After months of research, debate, and more research, Business Insider is proud to present our annual Silicon Valley 100, the authoritative ranking of the people who matter most in Silicon Valley. The list covers people who backed promising companies and saw big exits; were star executives; created new, interesting things; changed entire industries; and made industry-defining acquisitions or took their companies public.

In sum, these people aren't riding on old reputations. All of them did something of note since our last installment in February 2013, and they won big. And if you feel that we missed someone, tell us — we're not all-knowing, and we love telling stories about amazing people.

In A-Z Order »

The Complete List 1-100 »

Acknowledgments

Thanks to our many readers who took the time to send us nominations. The Silicon Valley 100 was assembled by Megan Rose Dickey, Jillian D'Onfro, Alyson Shontell, Jim Edwards, and Steve Kovach. Copy editing by Elizabeth Wilke and Jill Klausen.

100. Mike Judge, Alec Berg

Executive Producers, HBO's "Silicon Valley"

We got word earlier this year that producers Mike Judge and Alec Berg will be launching an Entourage-esque comedy show called "Silicon Valley" on HBO that will poke fun at SV and help pop its arrogance bubble.

The show follows a group of close-knit friends working at a company trying to develop a new search algorithm, and will include cameos from real-life Silicon Valley figures. It airs April 6 on HBO.

99. Aarthi Ramamurthy

Founder, Lumoid

Aarthi Ramamurthy is one of the most notable female entrepreneurs out there today. She spent six years at Microsoft working on its popular Visual Studio software development tool and on Xbox Live.

Before founding Y Combinator-backed Lumoid, a startup for letting people test-drive electronics before buying them, she co-founded a bra-fitting company called True&Co.

98. Naveen Jain, Dr. Reid Rubsamen

Co-founders, Immunity Project

A team of scientists and entrepreneurs are trying to cure HIV/AIDS. Immunity Project, which is in the current Y Combinator class, has already developed a prototype and completed preliminary lab testing.

The Immunity Project is currently trying to raise $482,000 to fund its final experiment before beginning its Phase I clinical study. So far, more than 1,000 people have pledged over $200,000 to the project.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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19 Extraordinary Women In Silicon Valley Tech

March 20, 2014, 6:30 pm

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ann miura ko

It was an exciting year for tech in Silicon Valley, so we've decided to highlight a few women who we think have had particularly awesome achievements.

They've created interesting startups, snagged new positions at great companies, and have had major milestones at their own.

Aarthi Ramamurthy

Founder, Lumoid

Aarthi Ramamurthy is one of the most notable female entrepreneurs out there today. She spent six years at Microsoft working on its popular Visual Studio software development tool and on Xbox Live.

Before founding Y Combinator-backed Lumoid, a startup for letting people test-drive electronics before buying them, she co-founded a bra-fitting company called True&Co.

Grace Garey

Co-founder and marketing, Watsi

This year, Watsi became the first charitable company to raise over $1 million in funding from traditional angel investors in Silicon Valley.

It is also the first Y-Combinator company to nab investor Paul Graham for its board of directors. Watsi allows anyone to give as little as $5 to fund someone's medical care, and 100% of the money is donated. The mission of this startup is so beautiful, you just have to root for its success.

Before joining Watsi, Garey did refugee research in Ghana, worked at a hospital in India, and did humanitarian advocacy in D.C.

Erin Teague

Director of product management, Yahoo

Erin Teague worked as the growth product manager for the mobile-only social network Path for two years and is responsible for the company's astounding user growth in 2013. In the spring, the app was growing by 1 million new users per week. It hit the 10-million-user mark in April. She worked on the product team at Twitter for two years before joining the Path team.

Last fall, she joined Yahoo as a director of product management.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Meet The 52 Hottest New Stars In Silicon Valley

March 22, 2014, 9:59 am

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≪ Previous: 19 Extraordinary Women In Silicon Valley Tech

Erin Teague

Silicon Valley is home to rockstars like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

But over the last year, many new faces made a name for themselves in Silicon Valley.

Some of these unfamiliar faces are trying to tackle HIV, whereas others are tasked with leading major divisions at Apple.

Angela Ahrendts, Denise Young Smith

Head of Retail; Head of Human Resources, Apple

In October 2013, Apple announced the hiring of former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts as the company's new head of retail.

Then, in February 2014, Apple appointed Denise Young Smith to lead its worldwide human resources division. The pair are in charge of the future of two of Apple's most important assets: its chain of stores and its talent.

(It's also great to see Apple shaking up its previously male-dominated top ranks.)

Mike Del Ponte

Founder, Soma

Mike Del Ponte is the genius behind Soma, a sort of Warby Parker of water filters. In July 2013, it closed a $3.7 million round of seed funding led by Baseline Ventures and Forerunner Ventures.

Soma is targeting people who are tired of ugly Brita water filters and are passionate about sustainability. For every biodegradable water filter it sells, Soma donates money to charity.

Taro Fukuyama, Ilya Tokhner

CEO; director of business development, AnyPerk

After being told he had the worst startup in his Y Combinator batch, Taro Fukuyama had to figure out how to turn the company around. Six pivots later, he landed on AnyPerk. AnyPerk helps put startups on par with Google and Facebook when it comes to perks, offering discounts on things like movie tickets, lift tickets, cell phone plans, Lyft car-sharing rides, and car rentals.

Today, AnyPerk has 28 employees. Last March, the startup raised a $1.4 million seed round from Digital Garage, Ben Lewis, Michael Liou, CyberAgent and Shogo Kawada.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Who are the coolest people in Silicon Valley? Submit your nominations now!

February 9, 2015, 11:57 am

≫ Next: The Silicon Valley 100 2015: 1-100

≪ Previous: Meet The 52 Hottest New Stars In Silicon Valley

nuclear explosion larry page Soon, we will publish the most eagerly awaited rankings list in the San Francisco Bay Area: The Silicon Valley 100.

The Silicon Valley 100 will rank the 100 people who have done the coolest stuff in the Silicon Valley digital community in the past year.

So it's time to send us your nominations!

In this form, please post the names of people you think have done the coolest stuff in and for the Silicon Valley digital community this year.

Then, for each person you nominate, please explain what they have done that you think is so cool.

What does “done something cool” mean? Great question!

Launched an innovative startup
Created an excellent product
Funded a few cool companies
Significantly supported and contributed to the Bay Area's digital community
Accomplished something amazing in their careers
Donated a ton of money or time to a worthy cause
Etc. — You be the judge

Still not clear? Check out our Silicon Alley 100 list, which looks at the coolest people in NYC's tech scene for the year.

You have just over a week to get your nominations in (please have all nominations in by Feb. 18). Meanwhile, we’ll start working on our own nominations to separate awe-inspiring people from the hype.

Then we’ll spend a couple weeks narrowing down the list before we unveil the 2015 rankings.

So get cracking! Post your nominations here! For any SV 100-related questions, please reach out to Maya Kosoff at mkosoff@businessinsider.com.

Join the conversation about this story »

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The Silicon Valley 100 2015: 1-100

June 24, 2015, 6:48 am

≫ Next: 2015 Silicon Valley 100: A-Z

≪ Previous: Who are the coolest people in Silicon Valley? Submit your nominations now!

After months of research and debate, Business Insider has released the Silicon Valley 100, the who's who of the most prominent, and coolest, people in Silicon Valley.

To compile the list, we looked at who won big in the past year: star executives, industry-changing acquisitions, top VCs, promising companies shifting industries, and more.

We've listed everyone from 1-100 below, as well as some quotes from the most well-known and influential people on the list. You can view the full SV100 in detail here, or click on each name for more information about the coolest people in Silicon Valley.

1. Elizabeth Holmes– Founder, CEO, and chairman of Theranos

2. Travis Kalanick– CEO and cofounder of Uber

3. Tim Cook– CEO of Apple

Tim Cook_SV100

4. Jack Dorsey– CEO of Twitter (interim) and Square

5. Sundar Pichai– Senior vice president at Google

6. Renaud Laplanche– Founder and CEO of Lending Club

7. Nick Woodman– Founder and CEO of GoPro

8. Marc Benioff– Cofounder and CEO of Salesforce

Marc Benioff_SV100

9. Stewart Butterfield– Cofounder and CEO of Slack

10. Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Box

11. Mikkel Svane, Morten Primdahl, and Alexander Aghassipour– Cofounder/CEO, cofounder/CTO, and cofounder/CPO of Zendesk

12. Rob Bearden– CEO of Hortonworks

13. Suresh Batchu and Ajay Mishra– Cofounders of MobileIron

14. Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe– Cofounders of Oculus

15. Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin– Cofounders of Lynda.com

16. Art Levinson– CEO of Calico

17. Elon Musk– CEO and CTO of SpaceX; CEO of Tesla Motors; chairman of SolarCity

18. James Park– CEO of Fitbit

19. Mark Zuckerberg– Cofounder and CEO of Facebook

20. Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp– Cofounders of Pinterest

21. Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, and Joe Gebbia– Cofounders of Airbnb

22. Jony Ive– Chief design officer of Apple

Jony Ive_SV100

23. Larry Page– Cofounder of Google

Larry Page_SV100

24. Garrett Camp– Cofounder of Uber; founder of Expa

25. Ryan Graves– Head of global operations at Uber

26. Chris Sacca– Founder of Lowercase Capital

27. Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue– Cofounder of Beats Electronics/SVP of internet software and services at Apple

28. Anthony Noto– CFO of Twitter

29. Parker Conrad and Laks Srini– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Zenefits

30. Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, and Kevin Lin– Cofounders of Twitch

31. Meg Whitman– Chairwoman, president, and CEO of Hewlett-Packard

32. Kayvon Beykpour and Joseph Bernstein– CEO and cofounder/cofounder of Periscope

33. Shannon Liss-Riordan– Employment-rights lawyer

34. Mark Pincus– Cofounder and CEO of Zynga

35. Ellen Pao– CEO of Reddit

36. Tony Fadell– CEO of Nest Labs (Google)

37. Patrick and John Collison– Cofounders of Stripe

38. Angela Ahrendts– SVP of retail and online stores at Apple

39. Reed Hastings– Cofounder and CEO of Netflix

40. Marissa Mayer– CEO of Yahoo

Marissa Mayer_SV100

41. John Thompson– Chairman of Microsoft; CEO of Virtual Instruments

42. Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, and Safra Catz– Former CEO, now chairman and CTO/co-CEO/co-CEO of Oracle

Larry Ellison_SV100

43. Susan Wojcicki– CEO of YouTube

44. Megan Smith– US chief technology officer

45. David Marcus– Vice president of messaging products at Facebook

46. Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani – Cofounders of Dropcam

47. Albert Lee and Mike Lee– Cofounders of MyFitnessPal

48. Simon Khalaf– President and CEO of Flurry; SVP of product and engineering, publisher products at Yahoo

49. Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett– Cofounders of Github

50. Dheeraj Pandey– Cofounder and CEO of Nutanix

51. Nirav Tolia, David Wiesen, Prakash Janakiraman, and Sarah Leary– Cofounders of Nextdoor

52. Peter Asbill, Elias Roman, Elliott Breece, Scott Robbin, and Aza Raskin– Cofounders of Songza

53. Alex Hawkinson, Jeff Hagins, and Andrew Brooks– Cofounders of SmartThings

54. John Zimmer and Logan Green– Cofounders of Lyft

55. Mike Olson, Christophe Bisciglia, Amr Awadallah, and Jeff Hammerbacher– Cofounders of Cloudera

56. Jason Kilar and Richard Tom– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Vessel

57. Max Mullen, Brandon Leonardo, and Apoorva Mehta– Cofounders of Instacart

58. Josh James– Founder and CEO of Domo

59. Tony Xu, Evan Moore, Stanley Tang, and Andy Fang– Cofounders of DoorDash

60. Ryan Hoover– Founder of Product Hunt

61. Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev– Cofounders of Robinhood

62. Ben Rubin, Uri Haramati, and Itai Danino– Cofounders of Meerkat

63. Kevin Gibbon and Joshua Scott– Cofounders of Shyp

64. Craig Martin and Curtis Lee– Cofounders of Luxe Valet

65. Balaji Srinivasan, Matthew Pauker, Nigel Drego, Daniel Firu, and Veerbhan Kheterpal– Cofounders of 21 Inc.

66. Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam– Cofounder and CEO/cofounder of Coinbase

67. Brit Morin– Founder and CEO of Brit + Co.

68. Doug Evans– Founder and CEO of Juicero

69. Kavan Seggie– Founder of AddLive

70. Josh McFarland and Mark Ayzenshtat– Cofounders of TellApart

71. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg– Cofounders of Re/code

72. Amit Kumar, Jeff Winner, Eckart Walther, and Geraud Boyer– Cofounders of CardSpring

73. Dave Morin– Cofounder of Path; founder of Slow Ventures

74. Solomon Hykes– Founder and CTO of Docker

75. Steve Zadesky– Vice president of iPod/iPhone product design at Apple

76. Bill Gurley– General partner at Benchmark Capital

77. Chamath Palihapitiya– Founder of Social+Capital Partnership

78. Sam Altman– Founding partner and president of Y Combinator

79. Andy Rubin– Managing director of Playground Global

Andy Rubin_SV100

80. Renee James– President of Intel

81. Ed Lee– Mayor of San Francisco

82. Eric Migicovsky– Founder and CEO of Pebble

83. Josh Reeves, Edward Kim, and Tomer London– Cofounders of ZenPayroll

84. Andrew Rubin, PJ Kirner, and Alan Stokol– Cofounders of Illumio

85. Ev Williams– Founder of Obvious Ventures

86. Adam Cahan– SVP of product and engineering, video, design, and emerging products at Yahoo

87. Jason Johnson and Yves Behar– Cofounders of August

88. Kyle Vogt– CEO of Cruise

89. Aarthi Ramamurthy– Founder of Lumoid

90. Liz Wessel and JJ Fliegelman– Cofounders of Campus Job

91. Amanda Bradford– Founder and CEO of The League

92. Or Arbel– Cofounder and CEO of Yo

93. Ross Mason– Founder and VP of product strategy at MuleSoft

94. Rand Paul– US senator (R-Kentucky) and 2016 presidential candidate

95. John Doerr and Mary Meeker– Partners at Kleiner Perkins

96. Peter Thiel– Partner at Founders Fund; chairman of Palantir; founder of the Thiel Fellowship; investor

Peter Thiel_SV100

97. Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest– Cofounders of Okta

98. Conrad Chu, Van Tran, and Tri Tran– Cofounders of Munchery

99. Gagan Biyani, Morgan Springer, Neeraj Berry, and Matt Kent– Cofounders of Sprig

100. Mat Honan– Bureau chief of BuzzFeed SF

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2015 Silicon Valley 100: A-Z

June 24, 2015, 6:48 am

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Back to the Silicon Valley 100 >>

Join the conversation about this story »

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THE SILICON VALLEY 100: The most amazing and inspiring people in tech right now

June 24, 2015, 6:52 am

≫ Next: How a tweet turned Uber's first hire into a billionaire

≪ Previous: 2015 Silicon Valley 100: A-Z

Silicon Valley 100 2015

With new startups launching, constant fundraising, and endless chatter, the who's who of Silicon Valley is always changing, and only a lucky few come out on top.

After months of research and debate, Business Insider is proud to present the Silicon Valley 100, our annual list of the people who matter most in Silicon Valley.

To compile the list, we looked at who won big in the past year: star executives, industry-changing acquisitions, top VCs, promising companies shifting industries, and more. This list isn't about long-standing reputations; it's about who's done notable things since spring 2014.

Did we miss anyone? Let us know in the comments below, because we love telling stories about amazing people.

Scroll down to see the 100.

Or see them in A-Z order»

Or in 1-100 order»

The list was compiled by Business Insider's technology editors. Additional reporting by Christi Danner and Tanza Loudenback. Photo research by Melia Robinson.

100. Mat Honan

Bureau chief, BuzzFeed SF

BuzzFeed hired Mat Honan at the end of 2014 to lead its new San Francisco office. Since the office opened, Honan has hired 17 reporters dedicated to tech news — most notably Nitasha Tiku, who previously worked at The Verge and Gawker's Valleywag. The intention of Honan's new office is to make the website as a must-read tech-news source, a niche that BuzzFeed has struggled with.

Previously, Honan was a senior staff writer and editor at Wired. Upon being hired at BuzzFeed, he said, "Our coverage will be aggressive and bold, like our hiring, and we’ll look to do the kind of authoritative reporting that asks questions and gets real answers from the most powerful people in this industry."

99. Gagan Biyani, Morgan Springer, Neeraj Berry, Matt Kent

Cofounders, Sprig

CEO Gagan Biyani's mission is for Sprig to become "the easiest way to eat healthy in the world." Former Google head chef Nate Keller leads the in-house kitchen staff that prepares each meal delivered by Sprig, the on-demand fresh-food delivery service that launched in November 2013. It offers three meal options daily and aims to deliver the food in 15 minutes.

In April, the company raised $45 million in funding, which spurred its expansion to Chicago from the San Francisco Bay Area.

98. Conrad Chu, Van Tran, Tri Tran

Cofounders, Munchery

Van Tran, Tri Tran, and Conrad Chu wanted to provide the convenience of a professional chef without the high cost, and in 2011 Munchery was born. The company is similar to Seamless, except your food is made by Munchery's chefs instead of being outsourced to restaurants. Each time you order a meal on Munchery, the company makes an equivalent donation to a charity in your town.

Munchery made headlines in April when it raised a $28 million Series B round. More recently, Sherpa Ventures, a prominent venture-capital firm, announced it was making its "biggest bet since Uber" by endorsing Munchery. At the end of May, the company announced its Series C round of $85 million co-led by Menlo Ventures and Sherpa. Munchery has raised $117.2 million, including contributions from celebrities such as Jared Leto and Edward Norton.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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How a tweet turned Uber's first hire into a billionaire

June 24, 2015, 9:02 am

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ryan graves, uber, sv100 2015

In January 2010, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick tweeted, "Looking 4 entrepreneurial product mgr/biz-dev killer 4 a location based service.. pre-launch, BIG equity, big peeps involved--ANY TIPS??"

His car-hailing company, most recently valued at $50 billion, was less than a year old at the time.

A guy named Ryan Graves saw Kalanick's tweet and responded.

"Here's a tip. email me :)," Graves wrote on Twitter. He included his email address too.

Back then, Graves was a normal guy whose work experience included a database-administrator position at General Electric and a stint in business development at Foursquare that he acquired by working for them for free after the company initially turned him down.

Five years later, this tweet would make a billionaire out of Graves.

Kalanick presumably followed up with Graves, who became Uber's first hire. Graves was briefly Uber's CEO before Kalanick replaced him in late 2010. Graves stayed on as Uber's head of global operations, where he remains today.

Uber's sky-high valuation makes Graves a paper billionaire. For this reason, Graves made the cut on Business Insider's annual Silicon Valley 100 list. Kalanick, Graves, and Uber cofounder Garrett Camp also all made Forbes' list of the world's billionaires for the first time this year. Cofounders Kalanick and Camp have a larger stake in the company than Graves does, which explains their larger net worths ($5.3 billion and $5.3 billion, respectively, as opposed to Graves' $1.4 billion).

"Ryan Graves’ first day was March 1st and he hit the ground running," Kalanick said in a blog post detailing Uber's origins. "From the day he got going, we spent about 15-20 hours a week working together going over product, driver on-boarding, pricing model, the whole nine. He learned the startup game fast and worked his ass off to build the Uber team and make the San Francisco launch and subsequent growth a huge success."

Uber expanded its Series E round of funding from $1.2 billion to $2.8 billion earlier this year, bringing the total amount of funding raised by Uber to an astounding $5.9 billion. The company is rumored to be raising even more money — another $1 billion— from Chinese investors, which could possibly signal an IPO soon.

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The 18 coolest women in Silicon Valley

June 29, 2015, 9:39 am

≫ Next: The coolest and most powerful people over 40 in Silicon Valley

≪ Previous: How a tweet turned Uber's first hire into a billionaire

Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos We recently published our annual Silicon Valley 100 list, which ranks the most inspiring people in tech.

And while the tech industry is notoriously male-heavy, our ranking of who's who included a number of women who are truly raising the bar in Silicon Valley.

From CEOs to engineers to investors, these women are showing the rest how it's done. Scroll through to meet the most driven and innovative women in tech.

Elizabeth Holmes

Founder, CEO, Chairwoman, Theranos

When she was a sophomore at Stanford in 2003, Elizabeth Holmes founded healthcare-technology company Theranos and within months she dropped out of school to pursue it full time. Today, she's America's youngest female billionaire with a net worth of $4.6 billion.

Theranos is a $9 billion biotech company that has a new approach to blood testing. Its goal is to make clinical testing cheaper and faster. Theranos wants to conduct blood tests for health issues through a single finger stick rather than by having to draw vials of blood in a doctor's office. Theranos has drawn skepticism from the scientific community in part because Theranos is cagey about how its tests actually work. But for now, Holmes is on top of the world. Today, her blood tests are used in places like Walgreens.

Lynda Weinman

Cofounder, Lynda.com

In April, online-learning website Lynda sold to LinkedIn. The deal, a $1.5 billion cash-stock blend, closed in Q1. Most of Lynda's employees joined LinkedIn following the acquisition, which lets LinkedIn's 350 million users access the platform for skill building and education videos, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said.

Founded in 1995 by Lynda Weinman and her husband, Bruce Heavin, Lynda.com lets users learn business, technology, software, and creative skills through videos. People can access Lynda on their own, and corporations and schools can purchase subscriptions.

Weinman has been dubbed by many as "the mother of the internet."

Meg Whitman

President, CEO, Chairwoman, Hewlett-Packard

HP announced that it would be undergoing massive multiyear layoffs in 2012. Since then, the company has eliminated 48,000 employees. It's on its way to eliminating 55,000 by October. And in November, Whitman will split HP into two companies, and the layoffs will likely continue.

Whitman has also said she’ll be moving more jobs from HP’s Enterprise Services unit offshore after HP splits in two. Last year, Whitman got a $1.5 million raise and a $4.3 million bonus. She's one of the most generously compensated CEOs in her field.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

↧

The coolest and most powerful people over 40 in Silicon Valley

July 6, 2015, 11:14 am

≫ Next: The 38 coolest startups in Silicon Valley

≪ Previous: The 18 coolest women in Silicon Valley

Larry Ellison

Silicon Valley is known for its obsession with youth. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg once suggested that people over 30 shouldn't really work in tech startups because "young people are just smarter."

These folks are bucking the trend.

Pulled from our recently published Silicon Valley 100 list, meet the elder statesmen and stateswomen of Silicon Valley.

Nick Woodman, 40

Founder/CEO, GoPro

GoPro, the company that makes wearable sports cameras, priced its IPO at $24 a share when it went public in June. Woodman became a billionaire when his company went public, and his whole family became millionaires too. GoPro went public at a $2.6 billion valuation.

Marissa Mayer, 40

CEO, Yahoo

In September, Alibaba went public. Investors in Yahoo expected Alibaba's public value to send Yahoo’s stock soaring. But after Alibaba's debut, Yahoo's stock crashed.

Months later, Yahoo unveiled a plan to spin off its remaining 15% stake in Alibaba, tax-free, into a public, independent investment company called SpinCo. Yahoo shareholders would receive shares "distributed pro rata," which means they'd own shares in two companies.

Stewart Butterfield, 41

Cofounder/CEO, Slack

Slack is a workplace-communication app. Slack has group- and private-chat features and lets users share files and work collaboratively. Slack was originally an internal tool used by CEO Stewart Butterfield's team at Tiny Speck, the company that made the multiplayer game Glitch, but Butterfield decided to spin it out into its own product and company.

Slack's growth as an enterprise communication tool has been organic— it hasn't spent any money on marketing. It's one of the fastest-growing enterprise apps of all time. Slack recently confirmed that it raised $160 million at a $2.8 billion valuation. That means it more than doubled its value since October, when it raised $120 million at a $1.12 billion valuation.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The 38 coolest startups in Silicon Valley

July 7, 2015, 8:40 am

≫ Next: The 38 coolest CEOs right now in Silicon Valley

≪ Previous: The coolest and most powerful people over 40 in Silicon Valley

elizabeth holmes, theranos, sv100 2015 There's no shortage of innovative and impressive startups in Silicon Valley.

But which are the coolest?

Pulled from our recently published Silicon Valley 100 list, meet the coolest startups in Silicon Valley.

All the companies on this list are private tech companies that have raised venture-capital funding.

Gagan Biyani, Morgan Springer, Neeraj Berry, Matt Kent

Cofounders, Sprig

In April, the company raised $45 million in funding, which spurred its expansion to Chicago from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Conrad Chu, Tri Tran

Cofounders, Munchery

Tri Tran and Conrad Chu wanted to provide the convenience of a professional chef without the high cost, and in 2011 Munchery was born. The company is similar to Seamless, except your food is made by Munchery's chefs instead of being outsourced to restaurants. Each time you order a meal on Munchery, the company makes an equivalent donation to a charity in your town.

Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest

Cofounders, Okta

McKinnon is a Valley A-lister, a former star Salesforce engineer who launched his own company in 2009 without CEO and friend Benioff's blessing. His company has seen massive growth: By September 2014 it had raised $155 million from top VCs. Okta is now valued at about $600 million and is expected to go public by 2016.

McKinnon said there's tremendous value in working for a rapidly growing, successful company before pursuing other endeavors. He called his time at Salesforce a "gift" that taught him what it means to win.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

↧

The 38 coolest CEOs right now in Silicon Valley

July 16, 2015, 8:08 am

≫ Next: How a 60-year-old woman turned her $35 domain name into a $1.5 billion business

≪ Previous: The 38 coolest startups in Silicon Valley

elizabeth holmes theranos

We recently released the Silicon Valley 100 , Business Insider's annual list of the most impressive people working in or influencing the world of tech.

We went through the SV100 list to pull out the most influential, innovative, and all-around inspiring CEOs in Silicon Valley in 2015.

Scroll down to see who the coolest CEOs in Silicon Valley are right now.

The SV100 list was compiled by Business Insider's technology editors and written by Emmie Martin, Maya Kosoff, and Melissa Stanger. Additional reporting by Tanza Loudenback and Christi Danner. Photo research by Melia Robinson.

WATCH: The coolest 100 people in Silicon Valley in 100 seconds

38. Kavan Seggie

Company: AddLive

AddLive founder and CEO Kavan Seggie writes that he is "passionate about conceptualizing, strategizing, and developing great software products and businesses."

Last May, Snapchat made its first acquisition in AddLive, a real-time communications startup that allows the picture-messaging app to power its video-calling feature. The deal cost Snapchat $30 million.

AddLive's technology offers several useful tools to Snapchat, including screen-sharing, multiparty conferencing, and support for browser-based video chat via WebRTC.

37. Brit Morin

Company: Brit + Co.

Touted as the "Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley," Brit Morin specializes in the intersection of tech and DIY — and it's lucrative. Morin launched Brit+Co, a lifestyle website that features crafts, fashion, and decor, in 2011, and so far it's raised $27.6 million in funding from investors including Oak Capital, Intel Capital, and Marissa Mayer.

Before diving into her own site, Morin grew her love for the tech world as an employee at Apple and Google, where she worked on iTunes and Google Maps, respectively.

36. Brian Armstrong

Company: Coinbase

Before co-founding Coinbase, CEO Brian Armstrong worked as a software engineer in the fraud prevention department of Airbnb. Today his company is on the rise despite slumping bitcoin prices. Coinbase, a digital wallet used to buy and manage the digital currency raised a $75 million round in January — a record-breaking amount for a bitcoin company at the time. Investors include the New York Stock Exchange, Andreessen Horowitz, and banks USAA and BBVA, and the round supposedly puts Coinbase’s value at $400 million.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

↧

How a 60-year-old woman turned her $35 domain name into a $1.5 billion business

July 17, 2015, 8:56 am

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When Lynda Weinman founded lynda.com in 1995 alongside her husband Bruce Heavin, it was a side project, used mainly for personal communication between herself, her students, and readers of her newly-printed book.

But today, the site, an online learning database that helps people master skills in business, technology, software, and more through videos, has more than four million users and recently sold to LinkedIn for $1.5 billion.

It all started with Weinman's desire to share her fascination with web design. Back in 1993, she worked as a special-effects animator and taught at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She wanted to give her students a helpful resource for publishing their work online — a brand-new idea at the time — but every manual she came across was technical and dry, The Wall Street Journal reports.

So she wrote her own book, "Designing Web Graphics." It was a hit, and Weinman started getting emails and questions from readers all over.

Weinman herself is mostly self-taught when it comes to computer science. She first started experimenting with it in the early 80s when a boyfriend asked her to help him with his new computer, according to The Wall Street Journal. Weinman became entranced and started delving deeper into how computers work. "As the computer era gained popularity, I started sharing what I taught myself with others, and after years of this 'hobby' realized that I had a gift for simplifying technical instructions and had a true passion for teaching," she told Tiffany Pham at Forbes.

Lynda.com home page

She purchased lynda.com for $35 in 1995, and initially used it to communicate with students and readers who had questions about her book. Eventually, her husband had the idea to host an in-person web design class, so he booked a high school computer lab for a week during the school's spring break and advertised it on the site.

The first class completely sold out, with people flying in from across the globe to attend. "To put an ad on a website and have people come from all around the world was shocking to us," Weinman told Fast Company.

The success of the first class inspired the pair to offer more courses, which continued to sell out months ahead of time. The couple started an official school in 1997, gaining publicity primarily through Weinman's book and word of mouth, according to Forbes.

Bruce Heavin, Lynda.com, sv100 2015 But after the dot-com crash of the late '90s, Weinman's business began to slump in 2001. Weinman and Heavin were forced to lay off 75% of their staff — reducing the company from 35 employees to just nine, Fast Company reports. To save money, they ended all their classroom leases and started offering online courses instead.

It's important to remember that lynda.com's new model didn't launch in today's YouTube age where video tutorials are the norm. Online video was a relatively new format in the early 2000s, and it took customers a while to adapt to the idea. "It actually hurt our revenue to do it," Weinman told Fast Company.

But the couple kept at it, and by 2007, lynda.com employed over 500 people and had grown their user base exponentially. Today, the site features over 3,500 courses and thousands of videos on everything from 3D animation to photography. Customers can access Lynda on their own or purchase subscriptions through schools and corporations.

The company also recently made its way into the news — and landed Weinman and Heavin spots on our list of the most inspiring people in Silicon Valley— when it was acquired by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion in April.

The merger will grant LinkedIn users access to Lynda's host of skill-building videos, and create a variety of new possibilities for LinkedIn.

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The 7 hottest FinTech companies in Silicon Valley

July 20, 2015, 10:18 am

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Square Reader

Our 2015 Silicon Valley 100 list highlights the coolest people and companies in Silicon Valley right now. While only seven companies on our list are in the consumer financial technology (FinTech) industry, they're a wildly successful bunch.

According to recent numbers, the US is the leading country in investments in FinTech in the last year (up 200% from the previous year).

Payments and lending startups are both receiving huge sums of money — even big investment banks are interested in emerging players so they don't get left behind in the rapidly changing industry.

Let's meet the hottest FinTech companies in Silicon Valley right now.

AND: THE PAYMENTS INDUSTRY EXPLAINED: The trends creating new winners and losers in the card-processing ecosystem

Square is one of the easiest mobile payment systems for businesses to use.

Square is a software platform that enables retail stores and restaurants to accept mobile payments via iPads, iPhones, or Android devices.

Jack Dorsey, the company's founder and CEO, is also currently serving as Twitter's interim CEO; just after news broke that Dorsey would step in at Twitter, reports surfaced that Square was planning to go public. Sources say the company may have already filed a confidential registration document with the SEC, which is permitted for companies with less than $1 billion in revenue.

Square's most recent round came in late last year, when it raised $150 million at a reported $6 billion valuation.

Lending Club allows peer-to-peer financing.

Lending Club is one of the world's biggest online lending marketplaces. Last year, Lending Club's IPO was the largest among all US tech companies. Renaud Laplanche, the company's CEO, founded Lending Club to let people provide low-cost financing to their peers. Now, it lets institutional investors do the same.

The online credit marketplace raised $870 million in its IPO last December. It's valued at more than $7 billion.

Stripe helps developers and website owners accept any type of payment method.

In September, Apple announced partnerships with a number of retailers and payments companies for its Apple Pay service. Among them was Stripe, a five-year-old mobile-payments startup. According to its website, Stripe currently powers businesses out of nine global offices in 20 countries. The company focuses on beautiful code and design to create user- and developer-friendly experiences.

Recently, Stripe has been in talks to raise a funding round that could see the payments company, which has previously raised $190 million in funding, reach a valuation of $5 billion.

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The 12 coolest social media companies in Silicon Valley

August 7, 2015, 8:08 am

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facebook lite android emerging markets For better or for worse, social media is changing everything about the way we interact with one another and even how we spend our time alone. For that reason, it's smart to keep up with the goings-on of the social media world.

We recently came out with the Silicon Valley 100 — our annual list of the coolest people, products, and companies in Silicon Valley.

We pulled out the hottest social media companies that made the list. Here are 12 social media companies to watch.

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AddLive

Founder: Kavan Seggie

AddLive's technology offers several useful tools to Snapchat, including screen-sharing, multiparty conferencing, and support for browser-based video chat via WebRTC.

Facebook

Cofounder and CEO: Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook has been quietly busy this year with new features. For example, it acquired a video startup called QuickFire, which could help streamline the increased video consumption on Facebook.

At Facebook’s annual F8 developers' conference, David Marcus, head of messaging products, made a big announcement regarding Facebook Messenger: expansion into e-commerce and mobile payments inside the app. Marcus has helped the company roll out several other features as well, including a Skype-like video-calling service and the ability to send locations to friends.

The League

Founder and CEO:Amanda Bradford

The League is like a curated Tinder for elites, and it raised $2.1 million in seed funding earlier this year to play matchmaker to the most successful and ambitious singles. The League launched in San Francisco at the beginning of 2015 and just opened up to the New York market as well, where a targeted group of 2,500 users were allowed to sign up.

The goal, founder Bradford says, is to make more power couples and help people date "intelligently." The app now has its sights set on London.

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The coolest people under 40 in Silicon Valley

July 21, 2016, 9:20 am

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travis kalanick

Silicon Valley revolves around the minds of tech pioneers that are striving to burst through the industry ceiling each year.

These innovators have the power and ambition to change the way we think and live.

Business Insider recently released its annual Silicon Valley 100 list, highlighting the people in tech who have made a big impression this past year — and it's teeming with impressive and accomplished CEOs and founders under 40 years old.

From virtual reality to self-driving cars, these ventures are shaking up the tech world with these leaders at the helm.

Read on to check out some of the youngest people who've left an imprint on Silicon Valley in the past year.

Additional reporting by Julia Naftulin, Tanza Loudenback, and Alexa Pipia.

Edited by Alex Morrell and Matt Rosoff.

DON'T MISS: The 35 coolest CEOs in Silicon Valley right now

Jess Lee, 34

Cofounder and CEO, Polyvore

Yahoo bought the social shopping site Polyvore last July reportedly for a price of about $200 million, saying the company's expertise in community-driven experiences and retailer-supported commerce paired with Yahoo's premium content showed "amazing potential." Lee said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had a part in shaping her career when she interviewed Lee for Google's elite associate product manager program back in the early 2000s. Since it joined the Yahoo family, Polyvore expanded in February to include a new menswear category, an area that Pinterest is also aggressively going after.

Joe Lonsdale, 33

Founding partner, 8VC

Once dubbed one of the "hottest VCs since Andreessen Horowitz," Formation 8 broke up in November, with its founding partners, including Lonsdale, the Palantir cofounder, all leaving to start their own firms. The turnaround for Lonsdale was fast. Four months later, he had already raised $300 million for his new firm, 8VC. He now sits on the board of several hot startups including Oscar, Hyperloop One, and Wish.

Chris Wanstrath, 31

CEO, Github

Described as the "Facebook for code," Github's rapidly growing software development network is made up of over 15 million users. With more than 38 million projects available on the site, Github has become one of the largest communities of software developers on the web. Last summer, Github raised $250 million in series B funding, bringing total funding to $350 million and raising its valuation to $2 billion.

As for the future? Wanstrath told Business Insider in October that he wanted to make it easier for anyone to become a developer, and to do that he wants to focus on improving Github's service.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The most impressive people in Silicon Valley over 50

July 22, 2016, 6:00 am

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Angela Ahrendts

Silicon Valley is a revolving door of startups, big tech companies, VCs, and innovation — things are always changing.

But there are those that have weathered these transitions and changes year-in and year-out, becoming the most seasoned and experienced in the tech world.

Business Insider recently released its annual Silicon Valley 100 list, highlighting the people in tech who have made a difference this past year, of which many are longtime tech veterans over the age of 50.

They've seen the boom and bust of many technological feats and can feel where the industry is going.

Read on to learn about some of the most experienced people in the business over 50.

Additional reporting by Julia Naftulin, Tanza Loudenback, and Alexa Pipia.

Edited by Alex Morrell and Matt Rosoff.

David Boies, 75

Lawyer and board member, Theranos

Boies has provided legal counsel for a slew of troubled tech startups, ranging from Napster to Hampton Creek and now Theranos. The legal expert is defending the company from inquests by several government agencies and is considered a force to be reckoned with — he helped the US win the 1998 case United States v. Microsoft Corporation, in which the government accused Microsoft of becoming a monopoly.

David Drummond, 53

Senior VP of corporate development, Alphabet

With Google's restructuring into Alphabet, Drummond was pulled up to the top to oversee mergers and acquisitions for all of Alphabet's ventures. He previously acted as Google's first outside lawyer, working with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to secure Google's earliest financing rounds. Drummond also still sits on the board of Uber.

Tom Reilly, 54

CEO, Cloudera

Cloudera, a software company launched in 2008 that aims to help businesses — more than 20,000, in fact — make sense of huge data sets, has raised more than $1 billion in private funding. Investors include Intel, Google Ventures, and MSD Capital.

The company has been considering an initial public offering for more than a year to maintain its dominance in the market, but Reilly said in April that Cloudera would enter the public market only "when we've reached the right scale, when the business is more predictable, when there's greater visibility." They may have good reason to wait a while longer: Fidelity, another investor in the company, marked down the value of its Cloudera stake, along with stakes in several other startups, by 37% in March.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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THE SILICON VALLEY 100: The Coolest People In Tech Right Now

March 7, 2014, 3:53 am

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Silicon Valley 100

In A-Z Order »

The Complete List 1-100 »

Acknowledgments

100. Mike Judge, Alec Berg

Executive Producers, HBO's "Silicon Valley"

The show follows a group of close-knit friends working at a company trying to develop a new search algorithm, and will include cameos from real-life Silicon Valley figures. It airs April 6 on HBO.

99. Aarthi Ramamurthy

Founder, Lumoid

Aarthi Ramamurthy is one of the most notable female entrepreneurs out there today. She spent six years at Microsoft working on its popular Visual Studio software development tool and on Xbox Live.

Before founding Y Combinator-backed Lumoid, a startup for letting people test-drive electronics before buying them, she co-founded a bra-fitting company called True&Co.