Evan Beard | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 3, 1986 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Duke University [1] |
Evan Beard is an American entrepreneur, engineer, and co-founder/CEO of Standard Bots, an artificial intelligence robotics startup which has raised $63m from investors including General Catalyst and Amazon and build robots in the United States. [2] Beard has been recognized on the Forbes "30 under 30" list [3] which features the "brightest young entrepreneurs, breakout talents and change agents" and Business Insider's list of the "most inspiring and influential people in New York tech". [4] He appeared, along with Standard Bot's robots, in the A24 movie Babygirl [5] [6] . Prior to A Plus, Beard co-founded Etacts and ArmorHub, both acquired by publicly traded companies. [7] [8]
Beard attended Duke University, [9] where he studied computer science and graduated with distinction in economics in 2009. [10] While finishing school he wrote a widely distributed iOS app, “Girlfriend Keeper”, which attracted attention from international media, including Good Morning America, the LA Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and local news and radio stations. [11] [12] The app asked for details about one's significant other and sent automated emails and text messages expressing affection, such as "it's only 67 days until your birthday, I might get you something green like your eyes".
In 2009, shortly after graduating college, Beard co-founded Etacts and was admitted to the Y-Combinator seed accelerator. [13] Etacts was a relationship management app that provided a unified view of one's contacts and all emails, calls, and texts with them. [14] It allowed setting reminders on one’s contacts to remember to stay in touch with them. [15] [16] It also provided a contextual widget within Gmail that automatically showed biographical details next to emails, such as the education and work history of your correspondents. [17] The company raised $700,000 from prominent angel investors, including Ron Conway and Ashton Kutcher. [18] In 2010, Etacts was acquired by Salesforce.com, [19] [20] [21] where Beard subsequently worked in engineering as a Senior Member of Technical Staff.
In 2011, Beard co-founded Gridtech Inc which created ArmorHub.com. [8] [22] ArmorHub is an app that allows businesses to quickly scan their websites for application-level security vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting. ArmorHub was acquired by Spirent Communications, a publicly traded British company. [23]
In 2013, Beard moved to Los Angeles to co-found A Plus with Ashton Kutcher and Kendall Dabaghi. [24] [25] [26] A Plus is a technology-focused media company that creates positive journalism for millennials and uses its own technology for content creation, optimization and distribution. After a soft launch in early 2014, A Plus grew to 50 million unique visitors per month and six months after launch was the fastest growing site in comScore’s Mobile Metrix database. [26] [27] The site raised $3.5m from investors in 2015 and expects $8 million in revenue in 2016. [3] A Plus started in Kutcher’s living room and moved to New York City in 2014. [26]