Osman Rashid

Last updated
Osman Rashid
Osman Rashid.png
Rashid in 2019 (or earlier)
Born1970 (age 52–53)
London, UK
Alma mater University of Minnesota
Known for SOAR, Chegg, Convo

Osman Rashid (born 1970) is a Pakistani American businessman in Silicon Valley, California. He has worked in enterprise software and consumer products.

Contents

He was co-founder and CEO of three companies, an online textbook rental and student hub Chegg, remaining involved in it until early 2010 after growing the company from its inception in 2005. [1] He was co-founder and CEO of Kno, Inc, (acquired by Intel, 2013) [2] a digital education platform company. [3] Kno has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, [4] Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, FLOODGATE and GSV Capital, while Chegg was funded by KPCB, IVP, Gabriel Ventures and others. He founded Galxyz Inc., [5] in 2014, which was an educational software company focusing on creating next generation language arts and science enhancement products for primary and middle school students. [6]

Rashid is the CEO of Convo Corp, [7] an enterprise software company that focuses on in-context collaboration that is used as a conversational tool at work, and the co-founder & chairman of SOAR Education. His aim is to spread affordable STEM education in Pakistan. [8]

Personal life

Rashid was born in London, [9] did his early schooling in Ghana and finished middle and high school from Islamabad, Pakistan. He later moved to the United States where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from University of Minnesota in 1993. [10]

Career

Before founding Galxyz, Chegg and Kno, Rashid also started Gravitywell, an ASP based customer service company, and worked at Venturian, a subsidiary of ATIO Corporation, where Osman was VP of Business Development and Marketing. Between start-ups, Osman was Director of Business Development at Chordiant Software, Inc. [11]

Awards

He was awarded Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award in 2009 for Consumer Products in Northern CA. [12]

He has also been recognized as Forbes Impact 15 for 2012 [13] and in Inc.’s Immigrant Edge: 9 Wildly Successful Entrepreneurs. [14]

Philanthropy

Osman helped spearhead Chegg for Good program which plants a tree for every rental made, and to date has helped plant over 6 million trees. At Kno he developed a partnership with DonorsChoose.org to donate $1 of every sale made to help classrooms get school supplies. Osman is actively involved as a board member at ChildLife Foundation Pakistan which is bringing critical care and prevention of diseases to millions of young and needy children in Pakistan through a network of Urgent Care Clinics. [15]

He plans to set up an Endowment Fund to provide quality education to the financially disadvantaged, of which the platform is SOAR STEM Schools. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vinod Khosla</span> American businessman

Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Pincus</span> American Internet entrepreneur

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Omidyar</span> Entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founder of eBay

Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire. A technology entrepreneur, software engineer, and philanthropist, he is the founder of eBay, where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004. As of 2023, Forbes ranked Omidyar as the 220th-richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $9 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Siebel</span> American businessman

Thomas M. Siebel is an American billionaire businessman, technologist, and author. He was the founder of enterprise software company Siebel Systems and is the founder, chairman, and CEO of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence software platform and applications company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Duffield</span> American billionaire

David Arthur Duffield is an American billionaire businessman in the software industry. He is the co-founder and former chairman of PeopleSoft, co-founder and chairman emeritus of Workday, Inc., and current founder and CEO of Ridgeline, Inc. He has been on the Forbes World's Richest People list for many years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Rosensweig</span> American business executive

Dan Rosensweig is an American business executive who is chairman, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of student services company Chegg. Previously, Rosensweig served as president and CEO of Guitar Hero; COO at Yahoo!; president of CNET, and president and CEO of ZDNet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kno</span> Software company

Kno, Inc. was a software company that worked with publishers to offer digital textbooks and other educational materials. In November 2013, after raising nearly $100 million in venture capital, the company was acquired by Intel. The website was stopped and the service renamed to Intel Education Study later on.

Scott Kriens is an American businessman. He is chairman and former CEO of Juniper Networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisa Steele</span>

Elisa Steele is the former chief executive officer at Namely. Prior to being appointed to the role in August 2018, Steele sat on the company’s board of directors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chegg</span> American education technology company

Chegg, Inc., is an American education technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It provides homework help, digital and physical textbook rentals, textbooks, online tutoring, and other student services.

Notehall is an online marketplace, in which college students can buy and sell class notes. Notehall gained recognition after appearing on the ABC reality show Shark Tank in October 2009. It has since been purchased by Chegg, a textbook-rental company, for $3.7M in equity and undisclosed cash. Notehall.com was later integrated into the Chegg Homework Help site.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aneel Bhusri</span> Indian-American business executive

Aneel Bhusri is an American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Workday. He is also a partner at Greylock Partners and was a member of Intel's board of directors between 2014 and 2019. Bhusri has been a billionaire since 2014; as of 2021 he has a net worth of $3.1 billion.

Paul J. LeBlanc is the fifth and current president of Southern New Hampshire University.

David Hindawi is an Iraqi-born, American billionaire software entrepreneur, and co-founder of cybersecurity firm Tanium.

Monis Rahman is a Pakistani internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist and businessman. Rahman is the co-founder and executive chairman of Naseeb Networks, Inc. a business-oriented social network used primarily for online job recruiting. Rahman has been listed among the top entrepreneurs of 21st century several times. Forbes named him at #6 on its list of top "Ten Big Hitting Asian Businessmen under 50".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron Skonnard</span> American businessperson

Aaron Skonnard is an American businessman and the co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight. Skonnard founded the company in 2004 with Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams, to provide online video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals.

BookRenter was an American online textbook rental company based in San Mateo, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Lu</span> American Internet entrepreneur

James Fu Bin Lu is an American Internet entrepreneur. He has been a serial entrepreneur and senior corporate executive in Amazon and Baidu. He has served as the chairman of Grindr since 2020 and leading investor to a number of high-profile technology companies globally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sridhar Vembu</span> Indian entrepreneur

Sridhar Vembu is an Indian billionaire business magnate and the founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation. According to Forbes, he is the 55th richest person in India with a net worth of $3.75 billion, as of 2021. He was awarded India's fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, in 2021.

Matt Salzberg is a businessperson and entrepreneur, known for co-founding Blue Apron, Embark Veterinary and Suma Brands. He is currently founder and Managing Partner at Material, a venture fund focused on systematic company creation opportunities.

References

  1. ↑ "Rosensweig to Leave Guitar Hero; Takes Over as CEO of Online Textbook Rental Start-Up Chegg". All Things D. 2010-02-02.
  2. ↑ "Intel Education Welcomes Kno to the Family". CRS@Intel. 2013-11-08.
  3. ↑ "The Kno, a Tablet for the College Market". New York Times. 2010-06-02.
  4. ↑ "Kno Wants a Slice of Apple". Time Magazine. 2010-11-11. Archived from the original on November 15, 2010. Retrieved 2010-11-19.
  5. ↑ "Galxyz". www.galxyz.com. Retrieved 2018-02-12.
  6. ↑ "Chegg Co-Founder Osman Rashid Announces Galxyz, A Gaming Startup Focused On Science Education". TechCrunch. 29 April 2014. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  7. ↑ "Team communication and collaboration software". www.convo.com. Retrieved 2018-02-12.
  8. ↑ "Speaking with Osman Rashid, Serial Entrepreneur with multiple exits in US". TechJuice. 2020-05-21. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  9. ↑ "Chegg CEO Rashid applies Netflix concept to textbooks". USA Today. 2009-01-12.
  10. ↑ "The Spark Academy".
  11. ↑ "ABC News".
  12. ↑ Rashid, Osman (2009). "Hall of Fame - EY Entrepreneur Of The Year". eoyhof.ey.com. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  13. ↑ "Forbes Impact 15 for 2012". Forbes .
  14. ↑ "Inc.'s Immigrant Edge: 9 Wildly Successful Entrepreneurs".
  15. ↑ "ChildLife Foundation". ChildLife Foundation. 2020. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  16. ↑ "SOAR STEM School".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.