Shahin (Shawn) Shadfar (; born 1973 in

Tehran Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...

- died in 2018 in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

) was a Persian-American entrepreneur. He was the founder and president of omNovia Technologies, a software company specialized in web and video conferencing technology, and Xerzees Technologies, the company behind the mobile app Zurf.

Early childhood and education

Shahin Shadfar left Iran at age 12 and lived in France until the age of 24. He attended the Lycee Joffre Engineering Prep School and acquired his Bachelor of Science and master's degree in computer science from Supelec, Paris. Shahin moved to the United States at age 24 and received a Master of Science in electrical engineering from

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

in Atlanta. During his teenage years, Shahin was a passionate software programmer learned Basic, Pascal, C and Prolog.

Schlumberger

After graduation Shahin Shadfar joined the R&D department for Smart Cards in 1998 at Schlumberger in Austin and was part of the team that created and marketed the first Smart Card with on-board cryptography and java also known as

Java Card Java Card is a software technology that allows Java platform, Java-based applications (applets) to be run securely on smart cards and more generally on similar secure small memory footprint devices which are called "secure elements" (SE). Today ...

. He later focused in the Information Security group at Schlumberger leveraging smart cards for

Identity Management Identity and access management (IAM or IdAM) or Identity management (IdM), is a framework of policies and technologies to ensure that the right users (that are part of the ecosystem connected to or within an enterprise) have the appropriate acce ...

omNovia

In May 2004, Shahin Shadfar left Schlumberger and founded omNovia Technologies as an information security consulting firm but rapidly switched to developing a new web and video conferencing technology.

Zurf

Shahin and his wife, Muna started Zurf in July 2013. Zurf is a mobile app enabling one to leave "sticky notes" or zNotes for friends on top of any item (picture) on any website. Friends are automatically taken to the webpage and shown the item along with the zNote and can then add comments right on the note. Zurf was launched at the

TechCrunch Disrupt TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high-tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the co ...

show in San Francisco in September 2014. Shahin moved his family to San Francisco in May 2014. TechCrunch published an article on Zurf on September 12, 2014.

Death

Shahin Shadfar died on November 19, 2018, at the age of 45 due to colon cancer. The news of his death was never announced publicly; however, it was revealed by a compatriot in 2019.

References

External links

Shahin (Shawn) Shadfar biography on omnovia.com

Zurf Social Shopping App- Founder & CEO
(Video) {{DEFAULTSORT:Shadfar, Shahin American people of Iranian descent Businesspeople from Tehran Living people 1973 births Supélec alumni