Leah Culver | |
|---|---|
 Speaking in 2008 at The Next Web Conference (Amsterdam) | |
| Born | 1982or1983(age 40–41) |
| Alma mater | University of Minnesota |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Employer | Twitter, Inc. |
| Website | leahculver |
Leah Culver (born 1982 or 1983) [1] is a computer programmer, startup founder, and angel investor.
Culver started as an art major at the University of Minnesota, but switched majors and earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science in 2006. [2]
Culver is a co-author of a Python library for the open-standard authentication OAuth 1.0 and a co-author of OEmbed. [3] [4]
After graduating, she worked at the startups iLoop Mobile and Instructables. [2] While working at Instructables, she received attention for etching company logos onto her laptop, which was funded by that ad space. [5]
In June 2007, [6] she co-founded Pownce, with Digg's cofounder Kevin Rose and Digg’s creative director Daniel Burka. [6] Pownce was a micro-blogging site she programmed by herself as an experiment, [7] described as "Twitter meets Napster". [6] The company was funded with investments from Culver's friends and family, rather than venture capitalists. [8] Pownce was acquired by Six Apart in December 2008. The website was shut down after the acquisition, but Culver implemented the technology she built for Pownce in TypePad and TypePad Motion. [8] She left the company in February 2010. [8]
After leaving Six Apart, Culver, along with Eric Florenzano and Eric Maguire, co-founded Convore, backed by Y Combinator. [9] Convore focused primarily on an application for real-time chat, technology that was inspired by FriendFeed groups and 37 Signals’ Campfire . [9] Convore pivoted into Grove, [10] a chat service for workgroups, which Culver says was sold to Revolution Systems in October 2012. [11]
Culver went on to work as an engineer at Dropbox, where she and her team created a copy of a fictional Image compression algorithm called Pied Piper from the television series Silicon Valley. [12]
Culver was CTO of Breaker, [13] a content-discovery platform for podcasts, [14] which she co-founded with Erik Berlin in 2016. [15] In January 2021, Culver and the Breaker team joined Twitter to help build Twitter Spaces. [15] The Breaker application was scheduled for shutdown on January 15, 2021, but instead was taken over by Maple Media. [15]
Culver was on the cover of MIT Technology Review in July 2008, [6] was named among the Most Influential Women in Web 2.0 by Fast Company magazine in November 2008, [2] was featured in the documentary The Startup Kids in 2012, [16] and was among Girl Geek X's 30 Female CTOs to Watch list in 2019. [17]
Culver has invested in technology such as Maker, a woman-led and minority-owned canned wine company, [18] and Gowalla, a former Foursquare competitor turned augmented reality social application. [19]
Culver is from Minnesota. [20] She resides in San Francisco, California with her Instagram-famous pug Mr. Wiggles. [20]
In January 2020, Culver purchased 714 Steiner Street, [21] the pink Painted Lady, for $3.55 million, [20] well over its asking price. [13] Culver purchased the home with the intention of renovating the property to its 130-year-old glory, [22] while making the home more climate-friendly with the direction of architect David Armour. [21] Culver created Instagram and Twitter profiles to share the progress on the historic building. [13] She underestimated the amount of work required and in May 2022 put the house up for sale at the original purchase price. [23]
Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox. The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is headquartered in Tokyo. The name is a reference to the six-day age difference between its married co-founders, Ben and Mena Trott.
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Kevin Rose is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and co-host at TechTV's The Screen Savers. From 2012 to 2015, he was a venture partner at GV.
Pownce was a free social networking and micro-blogging site started by Internet entrepreneurs Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, and Daniel Burka. Pownce was centered on sharing messages, files, events, and links with friends. The site launched on June 27, 2007, and was opened to the public on January 22, 2008. On December 1, 2008, Pownce announced that it had been acquired by blogging company Six Apart, and that the service would soon shut down. It was subsequently shut down on December 15, 2008.
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The history of Twitter, also known as X, can be traced back to a brainstorming session at Odeo.
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Acompli is a discontinued mobile app that allowed for user interaction with email messages as well as management of multiple email accounts in one programme. In addition, the tool also organized one's calendar and shared files. This application provided for integration with cloud storage platforms such as Dropbox, OneDrive, and iCloud; it also carried support for Microsoft Exchange and Gmail. Acompli launched on 24 April 2014. The startup company, which had $7.3 million in funding, was led by CEO Javier Soltero, J.J. Zhuang (CTO) and Kevin Henrikson.
Eric Feng is an American software engineer, business executive, and financier. He is a former general partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, where he focused on leading early stage consumer investments before leaving in 2018. Previously he was CTO of Kleiner Perkins portfolio company Flipboard, along with other companies.
ICONIQ Capital is an American wealth management and investment firm based in San Francisco, California. It functions as a family office that provides wealth management services to high net worth clients such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey and Jeff Weiner. The firm also is involved in investments related to Private Equity and Venture Capital.
