Aaron Iba (born June 18, 1983) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is known for co-authoring

Etherpad Etherpad (previously known as EtherPad) is an open-source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants' edits in real-time, with the ability to display each ...

, co-founding AppJet, and for his work as a partner in

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

. Iba graduated from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 2005 with a degree in Mathematics.

Background

Iba grew up in

Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, located 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by ...

and then attended the

. It was there that he teamed up with David Greenspan to win the annual Battlecode programming competition in 2003. Iba and Greenspan would go on to attend the

program, where they created AppJet and

. Iba would go on to become a partner in

, and was named "one of the best hackers among the YC alumni". Iba is also an

Angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible de ...

in over 10 companies, including

Meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

, PlanGrid, and

Light Table A light table is a viewing device that is used to review photographic film or artwork placed on top of it. The horizontal form of a self-standing lightbox provides even illumination of the subject from below, or through a translucent cover plac ...

AppJet/Etherpad

In 2007, Iba co-founded AppJet, a company providing

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

development and hosting tools. AppJet received funding from notable investors including Paul Graham,

Paul Buchheit Paul T. Buchheit (born November 7, 1977) is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur who created the email service Gmail. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested Google's former ...

Trevor Blackwell Trevor Blackwell (born 4 November 1969, in Canada) is a Canadian-American computer programmer, engineer, entrepreneur and roboticist based in England. Blackwell is a developer of humanoid robots. Blackwell is the founder and former CEO of Anyb ...

Mitch Kapor Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus Software, Lotus, where he was instr ...

and

Scott Banister Scott Banister (born 1975) is an American entrepreneur, startup founder, and angel investor. He cofounded the anti-spam company IronPort, and he was an early advisor and board member at PayPal. Ali Partovi credits him with the conception of pa ...

. AppJet failed to gain traction with developers, but in 2009 the company used its own tools to launch

, the first web-based realtime collaborative text editor. In 2009, AppJet was acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum. The

technology and team were merged into the

Google wave Google Wave, later known as Apache Wave, is a discontinued software framework for Collaborative real-time editor, real-time collaborative online editing. Originally developed by Google and announced on May 28, 2009, it was renamed to ''Apache Wa ...

project.

Y Combinator

In 2011, Iba became one of 6 full-time partners in

, where he oversaw and participated in numerous investments in startup companies. In 2013, Iba left

to found PayGarden, an alternative payments company borne out of insights he gleaned as an investor in various online merchants.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iba, Aaron Living people 1983 births American computer programmers Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni People from Lexington, Massachusetts