Hooman Radfar (born July 14, 1980,

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

) is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and computer scientist. He is co-founder and CEO at Collective, an online back-office platform designed for freelancers and consultants. He is currently a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of

AddThis AddThis was a free social bookmarking service that could be integrated into a website with the use of a web widget. Once the widget was added, visitors of a website using the service could bookmark or share an item using a variety of services, ...

, which was purchased by Oracle in 2016 for around $200 million.

Early life and education

At the time of the

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution (, ), also known as the 1979 Revolution, or the Islamic Revolution of 1979 (, ) was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979. The revolution led to the replacement of the Impe ...

, his family immigrated to England in 1979. Radfar was born in London in 1980. His family later moved to the United States where he was raised in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

. Radfar graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in 1998. In 2002, he graduated ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

'' from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

with degrees in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

and

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

. In 2004, he earned his M.S. from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

where he researched

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

multi-agent systems A multi-agent system (MAS or "self-organized system") is a computerized system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents.H. Pan; M. Zahmatkesh; F. Rekabi-Bana; F. Arvin; J. HuT-STAR: Time-Optimal Swarm Trajectory Planning for Quadroto ...

, and their applications to

computational economics Computational economics is an interdisciplinary research discipline that combines methods in computational science and economics to solve complex economic problems.''Computational Economics''."About This Journal"an"Aims and Scope" This subject e ...

Career

AddThis

In 2004, Radfar and Austin Fath founded Clearspring Technologies to create a platform for website developers to grow their traffic and engagement, based on their graduate research in web services and social networking at Carnegie Mellon. Clearspring launched the first content sharing and tracking service designed for web publishers in 2006. The company acquired AddThis in 2008, then XGraph in 2011. Clearspring was rebranded as

in 2012. AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016.

Expa

In 2014, Radfar moved to San Francisco, joining Expa as an EIR. He became a founding partner at the firm alongside Uber co-founder

Garrett Camp Garrett Camp (born October 4, 1978) is a Canadian-French businessman, investor, and software engineer. He helped build the search engine StumbleUpon and is a co-founder of Uber. He lives in Los Angeles. Early life and education Camp was born ...

and Foursquare co-founder

Naveen Selvadurai Naveen Selvadurai (born January 27, 1982) is an American internet entrepreneur and co-founder of location-based social networking site Foursquare.com. Until recently, he was working at startup studio Expa which was founded by co-founder of Uber a ...

in 2015. He led the investment program at Expa before founding Collective.

Collective

Radfar co-founded Collective with Ugur Kaner and Bugra Akcay on September 29, 2020 and is funded by General Catalyst Investors, QED Investors, Expa, Gradient Ventures, and Sound Ventures.

Patents

*Method and apparatus for widget and widget-container platform adaptation and distribution, (2008) *Methods and apparatus for management of inter-widget interactions, (2010) *Method and apparatus for widget-container hosting and generation, (2011). *Method and apparatus for data processing, (2012).

References

External links

Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Radfar, Hooman Living people 1980 births American computer programmers Carnegie Mellon University alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni American computer businesspeople American technology chief executives Iranian emigrants to the United States Silicon Valley people American technology company founders