Amol Sarva | |
|---|---|
 Sarva in 2019 | |
| Born | Amol Sarva New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Columbia University (BA) Stanford University (PhD) |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Title |
|
Amol Sarva is an American entrepreneur who founded Knotel, Halo Neuroscience, Knote, Peek, and Virgin Mobile USA.
Born and raised in New York City to Indian-American parents, Amol Sarva attended Stuyvesant High School. [1] [2]
He double-majored in philosophy and economics at Columbia University in New York, where he also founded his first startup (a web development firm called Netatomic) and worked with several Silicon Alley startups including Sonata (backed by Union Square Ventures' founder Fred Wilson's earlier venture fund, Flatiron Partners) and Gobi (an internet service provider sold to the public company Earthlink). [3] [ failed verification ]
In graduate school, Sarva completed his doctorate from Stanford University in philosophy, with a dissertation in cognitive science titled "The Concept of Modularity in Cognitive Science". [4] While at Stanford, he was involved with web technology (blogging, marketplaces) and startups - Virgin Mobile, Cymerc (backed by Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures), and also Gobi, chief among them.[ citation needed ]
Sarva is an American entrepreneur [5] and technology policy advocate [6] [7] known for co-founding two significant mobile service companies, Virgin Mobile USA [8] and Peek [9] [10] as well as Halo Neuroscience, Knotable and Knotel. Since 2012, he has backed nearly 100 startups including JUMP (acquired by Uber), Marley Spoon (publicly listed), CoverWallet (acquired by AON), and Goodco (acquired by Axel Springer).
At Virgin, he was one of the three earliest members of a team that created the MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) concept in the US. He helped raise $550 million, negotiate the joint-venture with Sprint, design the core product, hire the CTO, and hire the future CEO. At the time of his departure, Virgin Mobile had no revenues or customers. [11] It went public in 2007 with a billion-dollar valuation. [12]
Founder of Peek in late 2007, along with several of his former Virgin colleagues, he introduced the world's first mobile device dedicated to email. The product evolved to support a wider range of real-time web services including email, SMS, social networking. Peek launched services in the US, Europe, and Asia. [13] Peek was awarded numerous prizes including Time's Gadget of the Year and in 2012 the GSMA Nomination for Best Technology. [14] [15] In 2012, Peek service was discontinued. [16] Peek's software was incorporated into Twitter's Vine app and Viber. After acquiring Peek's platform, Bharti Softbank's Hike app reached 100 million monthly active users. [17]
In late 2012, Sarva created Halo Neuroscience, a company focused on neurostimulation technology for enhancing cognitive function. He recruited two cofounders — Dan Chao and Lee von Kraus - and raised the first $1 million to launch the effort. Halo served numerous elite sports and military organizations including the US Olympic team, tennis champions, and the US and UK special forces, and was acquired by med tech company Flow Neuroscience. [18] Sarva served on the board of directors through 2017.[ citation needed ]
Also in 2012, Sarva cofounded Knotable, the company that makes the collaborative application Knote.com. [19]
He created a series of courses at Columbia University that he has taught since 2016. [20] [21]
In January 2016, Sarva launched Knotel, the flexible office platform that in 2020 operated across more than 500 buildings in 27 cities in 10 countries, reaching $370mm in revenues before COVID and later acquisition . [22]
In January 2021, one month after the availability of the COVID vaccine, Knotel announced an acquisition plan by public company Newmark and restructuring plan, despite raising substantial equity from investors and being valued at over $1 billion in 2019. [23] Sarva left the company and did not stay on with Newmark.
During 2021, Sarva co-created several new companies and launched a venture capital fund called Life Extension Ventures. [24]
Sarva founded the Wireless Founders Coalition For Innovation in 2007 and appeared in US Senate hearings and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) panels on the subject of competition in US telecom. [25] [26] [27]
He was an advisor to Frontline Wireless in 2007-2008. In 2012, the US Congress announced a plan to implement the public safety and re-apportioning plan promoted originally by Frontline. [28]
He has been active in supporting American political candidates. He has opposed the 2016-elected President publicly and supported alternative candidates for 2020 as well as many Senate and House candidates. [29] [30]
Sarva built a 20,000 square foot, 9 story, architecturally-notable apartment building in Long Island City, Queens, New York from the ground up that was completed in 2012. [31]
Sony Group Corporation, commonly known as simply Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products, the largest video game console company and the largest video game publisher. Through Sony Entertainment, it is one of the largest music companies and the third largest film studio, making it one of the most comprehensive media companies. It is the largest technology and media conglomerate in Japan. It is also recognized as the most cash-rich Japanese company, with net cash reserves of ¥2 trillion.
Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.
Helio, Inc. is a former, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) using Sprint's network that offered wireless voice, messaging and data products and services to customers in the continental United States beginning on May 2, 2006. Originally a 50/50 joint venture founded in January, 2005 between South Korean wireless operator SK Telecom and American Internet services provider EarthLink, early losses caused EarthLink to stop providing additional funding in fall of 2007. SK Telecom provided the required additional funding to sustain Helio, which was re-organized as Helio LLC, and by January 2008, SK Telecom had assumed an increased ownership stake and with it, operational control of the joint venture. Although SK Telecom publicly pledged to support Helio, SK Telecom entered into talks to sell the company to rival MVNO Virgin Mobile USA. Virgin Mobile USA closed the acquisition of Helio and its 170,000 subscribers on August 22, 2008. Virgin Mobile USA exited the postpaid wireless business and retired the Helio brand on May 25, 2010.
Alfred S. Chuang is an American business technology executive and venture capitalist. He is the former CEO of BEA Systems. In 2020, he founded Race Capital, a venture fund.
Jay Adelson is an American Internet entrepreneur. In 2014 Adelson co-founded Center Electric with Andy Smith. In 2013 he founded Opsmatic, a technology company that improves productivity on operations teams. In 2015 Opsmatic was bought by New Relic. Adelson's Internet career includes Netcom, DEC's Palo Alto Internet Exchange, co-founder of Equinix, Revision3 and Digg, and CEO of SimpleGeo, Inc. In 2008, Adelson was named a member of Time Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People in the World and was listed as a finalist on the same list in 2009.
Andrew E. Rubin is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Rubin founded Android Inc. in 2003, which was acquired by Google in 2005; Rubin served as a Google vice president for 9 years and led Google's efforts in creating and promoting the Android operating system for mobile phones and other devices during most of his tenure. Rubin left Google in 2014 after allegations of sexual misconduct, although it was presented as a voluntary departure rather than a dismissal at first. Rubin then served as co-founder and CEO of venture capital firm Playground Global from 2015–2019. Rubin also helped found Essential Products in 2015, a mobile phone start-up that closed in 2020 without finding a buyer.
Zynga Inc. is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".
Constant Contact, Inc. is an online marketing company, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with additional offices in Loveland, Colorado; and New York, New York.
Wooga is a German game software company based in Berlin that develops story-driven casual games for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets and social networks like Facebook. It has developed mobile games such as June's Journey, Pearl's Peril and Switchcraft. The company is part of the social games company Playtika.
Peek Inc. was a mobile technology company founded in 2007 and headquartered in New York City. From 2008 to 2012, it offered a series of handheld mobile handheld devices which gave access to email and various social networks.
Richard William Costolo is an American businessman. He was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from 2010 to 2015; he also served as the COO before becoming CEO. He took over as CEO from Evan Williams in October 2010. On June 11, 2015, it was announced that Costolo would step down as CEO on July 1, 2015, and would be replaced by Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey on an interim basis until the Board of Directors could find a replacement. On August 8, 2015, The New York Times reported that Costolo would be leaving Twitter's Board of Directors by the end of the year or when a new CEO was appointed.
David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups, serving as CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capital soon after, a new venture capital fund that will continue to work with companies he previously funded through 500 Startups.
9GAG is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the platform for collections of Internet memes was launched on April 11, 2008, it has grown in popularity across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Garrett Camp is a Canadian billionaire entrepreneur. He has helped build a series of companies, including founding StumbleUpon, a web-discovery tool; co-founding Uber; and founding Expa, a startup studio. Camp is chairman of Mix, the successor to StumbleUpon, and served on the board of directors of Uber until 2020.
Medio is a business-to-business mobile web analytics provider based in Seattle, Washington. The company processes pre-existing data to provide historic and predictive analytics. Medio is built on a cloud-based Hadoop platform and is designed to interpret big data for mobile enterprise. Medio has had partners including: IBM, Rovio, Verizon, T-Mobile, ABC, and Disney.
Thomas Reardon is an American computational neuroscientist and the CEO and co-founder of CTRL-labs. Formerly, he was a computer programmer and developer at Microsoft. He is credited with creating the project to build Microsoft's web browser, Internet Explorer (IE), which was the world's most used browser during its peak in the early 2000s. He founded CTRL-labs in 2015 with neuroscientists from Columbia University. Following the acquisition of CTRL-labs he leads the neural interfaces group at Facebook Reality Labs.
In business, a unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over US$1 billion. The term was first published in 2013, coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.
Narendra K. Gupta was an Indian-American venture capital investor and technology entrepreneur. He founded the investment company Nexus Venture Partners, as well as various other investment and software firms. He was also CEO and president of Integrated Systems Inc. (ISI) for a decade and a half. In a career spanning over three decades he was recognized for his contributions to global technology and entrepreneurial ecosystems, and for venture capital investments in India.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012 and developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform TikTok (Douyin/抖音), formerly known as Musical.ly. As of October 2022, Zhang's personal wealth was estimated at US$55 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the second-richest person in China, after Zhong Shanshan. On November 4, 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021.
Clio is a legal technology company headquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia. Clio offers law firms cloud-based software that handles various law practice management tasks including client intake, contact management, calendaring, document management, timekeeping, billing, and trust accounting.
