Charlie Cheever (born August 2, 1981 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 ...

) is the co-founder of

Quora Quora is an American social question-and-answer website and online knowledge market headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can post questions, answ ...

, an online

knowledge market A knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, ...

. Cheever also founded Expo (formerly known as Exposition), a framework which creates app that works on Android, iOS and web by writing the JavaScript code, and a cloud platform called EAS (Expo Application Services) to accompany it. Additionally, he works at castle.xyz, developing the mobile application Castle - Make and Play which allows users to play and create interactive scenes, which can range from simple art and drawings to tiny homemade games and music.

Overview

Cheever is a former engineer and manager at

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. Prior to Facebook, Cheever was employed by

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

. He left Facebook to start

in June 2009 with

Adam D'Angelo Adam D'Angelo (born August 14, 1984) is an American internet entrepreneur. He is best known for his role as the co-founder and CEO of Quora, based in Mountain View, California, and as the first Chief Technology Officer of Facebook (now Meta). ...

. He stepped down from active management of Quora in September 2012 but remains an advisor. In 2016, it was announced that he is working as the CEO of Expo (formerly known as Exponent), a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

that is an open-source platform for making universal native apps for Android,

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, and the web with

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 ...

and React.

Education

Cheever attended Shady Side Academy for high school. He attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

from 1999 to 2003 where he graduated with a B.A. 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, ...

Harvard

In 2000 Cheever was brought in front of Harvard’s Administrative Board for creating a database of the Harvard student body. The program enabled students to find which dorm their classmates were living in. The database was quickly shut down by the Harvard administration. Cheever's project is said to have partially inspired fellow

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

alum

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

to create the website

FaceMash The history of Facebook traces its growth from a college networking site to a global social networking service. It was launched as TheFacebook in 2004, and renamed Facebook in 2005. Founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates Eduardo ...

. Zuckerberg later said that he considered Cheever to be a “kindred spirit”. He is a member of the

Fly Club The Fly Club is a final club at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was established in 1836 and operated as a chapter of Alpha Delta Phi before becoming a local organization in 1906. History Fly Club was founded in 1836 at Harvard ...

Career

Facebook

Zuckerberg recruited Cheever from Amazon to be an early engineer at Facebook. Cheever and Adam D’Angelo were responsible for most of the critical programming work involved with turning Facebook from a website into a platform. Most notably Cheever worked on Facebook Connect Authentication, the gaming platform at Facebook, Facebook News Feed, and Facebook Video. Cheever became known as a top engineer at Facebook after creating one of the most important internal tools, BunnyLol. The Python tool is still used today by every engineer at Facebook.

Quora

was founded in 2009 and headquartered in Mountain View, CA by Adam D'Angelo and Cheever. However, D'Angelo stayed on as CEO. Quora is a platform for asking and answering questions.

Expo

Cheever started working on Expo in the summer of 2015. The mission was to open up mobile software development to everyone. Expo makes it easier to develop apps using React Native for major platforms including Android, iOS and Web. Expo is used by large companies like Airbnb, Bluesky, Walmart, SpaceX and Tesla.

References

External links

* https://expo.dev/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Cheever, Charlie Living people 1981 births American computer businesspeople Engineers from Pennsylvania Amazon (company) people American information technology businesspeople Harvard College alumni Facebook employees Businesspeople from Pittsburgh 21st-century American businesspeople American technology chief executives