Evan Beard

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Evan Beard
Evan-beard.jpg
Born (1986-12-03) December 3, 1986 (age 37)
NationalityAmerican
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] Prior to A Plus, Beard co-founded Etacts and ArmorHub, both acquired by publicly traded companies. [5] [6]

Contents

Early life

Beard attended Duke University, [7] where he studied computer science and graduated with distinction in economics in 2009. [8] 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. [9] [10] 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".

Career

Etacts

In 2009, shortly after graduating college, Beard co-founded Etacts and was admitted to the Y-Combinator seed accelerator. [11] Etacts was a relationship management app that provided a unified view of one's contacts and all emails, calls, and texts with them. [12] It allowed setting reminders on one’s contacts to remember to stay in touch with them. [13] [14] 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. [15] The company raised $700,000 from prominent angel investors, including Ron Conway and Ashton Kutcher. [16] In 2010, Etacts was acquired by Salesforce.com, [17] [18] [19] where Beard subsequently worked in engineering as a Senior Member of Technical Staff.

ArmorHub

In 2011, Beard co-founded Gridtech Inc which created ArmorHub.com. [6] [20] 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. [21]

A Plus

In 2013, Beard moved to Los Angeles to co-found A Plus with Ashton Kutcher and Kendall Dabaghi. [22] [23] [24] 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. [24] [25] 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. [24]

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References

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