Alan Schaaf (born October 21, 1987), also known as MrGrim, is an American entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of the

image sharing An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be displayed through other media, including a projec ...

app and website

Imgur Imgur ( , stylized as imgur) is an American online image sharing and image hosting service with a focus on social gossip that was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009. The service has hosted viral images and memes, particularly those posted on ...

Early life

Schaaf was born in

Granville, Ohio Granville is a Village (United States)#Ohio, village in Licking County, Ohio, United States. The population was 5,946 at the United States Census 2020, 2020 census. The village is located in a rural area of hills, known locally as the Welsh Hills ...

. He attended

Ohio University Ohio University (Ohio or OU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Athens, Ohio, United States. The university was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the United States Department of the Treasury#Re ...

and received a bachelor's degree 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, ...

Career

Schaaf founded Imgur when he was an undergraduate at Ohio University in 2009. Imgur started as a simple image-sharing website and evolved into the largest image-sharing community in the world with more than 150 million

monthly active users Active users is a software performance metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular software product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from users or visitors within a relevant range ...

in 2015. Under Schaaf's leadership, Imgur was bootstrapped and profitable for five years, scaling organically to millions of users before receiving $40 million in investment from

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

in 2014. In 2015 Schaaf was listed as one of ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30.

References

External links

*
Alan Schaaf
on

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schaaf, Alan American Internet company founders Living people Ohio University alumni 1987 births People from Granville, Ohio 21st-century American businesspeople