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The coolest people under 40 in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley revolves around the minds of tech pioneers that are striving to burst through the industry ceiling each year.
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These innovators have the power and ambition to change the way we think and live.
Business Insider recently released its annual Silicon Valley 100 list, highlighting the people in tech who have made a big impression this past year — and it's teeming with impressive and accomplished CEOs and founders under 40 years old.
From virtual reality to self-driving cars, these ventures are shaking up the tech world with these leaders at the helm.
Read on to check out some of the youngest people who've left an imprint on Silicon Valley in the past year.
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Additional reporting by Julia Naftulin, Tanza Loudenback, and Alexa Pipia.
Edited by Alex Morrell and Matt Rosoff.
Cofounder and CEO, Polyvore
Yahoo bought the social shopping site Polyvore last July reportedly for a price of about $200 million, saying the company's expertise in community-driven experiences and retailer-supported commerce paired with Yahoo's premium content showed "amazing potential." Lee said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had a part in shaping her career when she interviewed Lee for Google's elite associate product manager program back in the early 2000s. Since it joined the Yahoo family, Polyvore expanded in February to include a new menswear category, an area that Pinterest is also aggressively going after.
Founding partner, 8VC
Once dubbed one of the "hottest VCs since Andreessen Horowitz," Formation 8 broke up in November, with its founding partners, including Lonsdale, the Palantir cofounder, all leaving to start their own firms. The turnaround for Lonsdale was fast. Four months later, he had already raised $300 million for his new firm, 8VC. He now sits on the board of several hot startups including Oscar, Hyperloop One, and Wish.
CEO, Github
Described as the "Facebook for code," Github's rapidly growing software development network is made up of over 15 million users. With more than 38 million projects available on the site, Github has become one of the largest communities of software developers on the web. Last summer, Github raised $250 million in series B funding, bringing total funding to $350 million and raising its valuation to $2 billion.
As for the future? Wanstrath told Business Insider in October that he wanted to make it easier for anyone to become a developer, and to do that he wants to focus on improving Github's service.
Cofounder and CTO, Zoox
Zoox, a driverless taxi startup, has permission to test in California — it's the only startup of its kind with a license to do so. The company recently closed a $200 million round, and it has reportedly been valued at $1 billion. Kentley-Klay and Levinson have stacked their staff with former Alphabet, Apple, and Tesla workers to build a technology that could rival Uber's ride-hailing service, though the company tends to stay under the radar with its driver-free projects.
Cofounder and CEO, Databricks
Databricks' data-crunching technology, Spark, allows for the real-time processing that powers new-wave technologies like self-driving cars and face-recognition tech. The concept fit the industry's latest "big data" trend: Companies are storing massive amounts of information and sifting through it to find business insights, and they are using all that data to offer their customers new programs and services. Ghodsi's company really burst onto the scene last year when IBM announced plans to invest about $300 million over the next few years into the open-source version of Spark.
Cofounder and CEO, Asana
For Moskovitz, one of Facebook's earliest employees, worker experience and profitability trump company growth. And Asana boasts an employee experience like no other: Its 190 employees enjoy homemade gourmet food all day long made by a professionally trained chef. In March, Moskovitz raised $50 million to keep his enterprise collaboration alive. The funds came from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan; Y Combinator president Sam Altman; Groupon founder Andrew Mason; and Peter Thiel's VC firm Founder's Fund, among others.
Cofounder and CEO, Eero
Those pesky Wi-Fi dead spots and slow loading speeds in your home no longer need to be an issue thanks to Weaver's mesh networking device. Eero, which finally launched early this year after a series of delays, uses multiple devices to blanket your entire home with a smooth Wi-Fi signal. It was worth the wait, though. Silicon Valley investors gave Weaver $90 million to build his concept, which according to our reviews, really does boost browsing speeds.
Cofounders, Clover Health
Clover Health, founded by Gale and Garipalli, has been on a funding tear, raising $260 million in the past year to revolutionize insurance. It received a record-breaking $4 million investment from First Round, a firm that on average invests $500,000 in its targets. What sets Clover apart from other insurance companies is its use of software on every level of care: It builds a team that maintains users' profiles and can dispatch nurses on home visits, after a surgery for example, to make sure patients are following through on their instructions and feeling better.
Head of ResearchKit and CareKit, Apple
Before ResearchKit, Nag dropped out of Stanford, founded Stem Cell Theranostics, and built Stanford's official medical innovation accelerator program. She joined Apple in 2014 and now leads the company's charge into the health tech realm, specifically with its open-source developer toolbox that provides data storage and sharing. Medical personnel use the technology in hospitals as a way to monitor and keep tabs on their patients. Plus, researchers can use the data to study diseases and health trends.
Cofounders; CEO (Silbermann), chief creative officer (Sharp), Pinterest
Pinterest hit over 100 million active monthly users and a $11 billion valuation this past year, spurring Silbermann and Sharp to ramp up their e-commerce plans. Their new buyable pins allow users to purchase items directly from the site's pins.
Though the company reportedly generated more than $100 million in revenue in 2015, Silbermann continues to reject rumors the company will go public and plans to focus on international expansion. In April, Pinterest announced that over half of its more than 100 million monthly active users were international.
CEO, Reddit
After founding Reddit, Huffman became its CEO after the social site's users rebelled for infringements on free speech and interim CEO Ellen Pao resigned. Since taking over, Huffman enacted policies meant to stop Reddit's abuse, like announcing that boards with content that incite violence or harm would be banned. Huffman's other main focus has been turning on potential areas for monetization, like the site's "I Am A…" subreddit. In June, the startup announced it would automatically rewrite some links posted to help generate revenue from affiliates.
Cofounder, Mesosphere
Last year, the cloud-computing startup Mesosphere, which valued itself at $1 billion, reportedly declined a $150 million acquisition bid by Microsoft. Microsoft and Mesosphere will continue their technology partnership, which integrates Mesosphere's flagship Data Center Operating System product with the Microsoft Azure cloud. Hindman created the company while at UC Berkeley, and now companies like Twitter and Airbnb use the technology to write code once and run it anywhere, on any server infrastructure.
Cofounder and CEO, Gusto
The human-resources software startup Gusto — formerly known as ZenPayroll — continues to grow, capitalizing on the recent troubles at Zenefits, one of its closest competitors. To keep Gusto thriving, Reeves focuses on putting customers first and curating a select team, rather than on expanding quickly and raising huge rounds of financing. That said, Gusto has raised more than $161 million, earning a $1 billion valuation in December.
Head of global consumer marketing for Apple Music and iTunes, Apple
Saint John stole the show at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference — she got the audience to rap along to the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and was dubbed "the coolest person to ever go onstage at an Apple event" by BuzzFeed. Saint John ended up at Apple by way of the company's acquisition of Beats Music, and before that she built Pepsi's music and entertainment marketing group. Her team at Apple revamped Apple Music with features, like lyrics, that excited WWDC's entire crowd.
Cofounder and CEO, Xamarin
Xamarin, an open-source development company, allows programmers to write mobile apps that work on any popular operating system (iOS, Android, Windows) and then host them on their cloud of choice. When Xamarin, founded by Friedman, was getting its start in 2011, Microsoft was still considered an adversary by most open-source developers.
But no longer: Microsoft has begun to embrace open source as never before, and it bought Xamarin for a reported $400 million to $500 million in February. Xamarin's new mission is to encourage developers to use Microsoft's cloud instead of competitors' as the company works to grow its cloud business.
Chief product officer, Facebook
The past year for Facebook has been all about video, and Cox is the man in charge of its product vision. The longtime Facebooker has led the full-blown charge into making video one of the top priorities both in your News Feed and for the company.
But his job isn't all video. Cox is also behind the changes to the "Like" button and also the new emoji reactions — don't call them a "dislike button" — that the company has seen this year. In June, Cox introduced more changes to the News Feed, including prioritizing friends' posts over those of publishers. Basically, whatever you see on Facebook is a result of Cox's leadership over everything product at the social network.
Cofounder, Uber; Cofounder, StumbleUpon; Founder, Expa
Though he has shifted his focus to other projects, Camp is a multibillionaire thanks to his stake in the ubiquitous ride-hailing service Uber; his net worth is now at$6.2 billion
This year, Camp launched the startup incubator Expa Labs, which has raised $100 million and will focus on providing a more hands-on experience to smaller cohorts of budding tech companies. Last August, he also bought back a controlling stake in StumbleUpon, the content-discovery website he cofounded as a graduate student in 2001 that learns what users like and recommends related sites to them.
Cofounder and CEO, Wish
Szulczewski has big plans for his e-commerce company. In 2015 he reportedly rejected multibillion-dollar acquisition inquiries from Amazon and Alibaba, and he projects Wish to sell $2 billion worth of goods this year. The company, which sells directly from merchants to consumers, spends big bucks on advertising, including an annual $100 million on Facebook ad space. Now people are wondering whether Wish could be the next Walmart of the online era.
Founder, Comma.ai
Hotz is best known for his previous life as a hacker — he cracked the original iPhone in 2007 when he was 17, and he went on to break into the PlayStation 3 in 2010. Since then he has built a self-driving car from the comfort of his own garage and created Comma.ai — a kit that lets customers turn "dumb" cars into self-driving versions — based on that technology. It caught the attention of Andreessen Horowitz, which invested $3 million in the startup.
Cofounder and CEO, Tanium
Hindawi attributes Tanium's success to its focus on building a quality product before fixating on growth. Now the hot security startup claims to be cash-flow positive and growing at more than 250% a year. After raising $52 million, the company raised another $120 million a mere five months later. In that time, Tanium's valuation doubled to $3.5 billion. The most impressive part? The company spends no money on sales and marketing, but rather it gets all its customers through word of mouth in the IT community.
Cofounder and VP of Community & Member Success, SoFi
The lending and wealth-management startup SoFi received a $1 billion funding round led by SoftBank last year that was the biggest financing round ever in the fintech industry. Since then, SoFi has been pursuing a $30 billion valuation and building up as a competitor with brick-and-mortar banks and online lending services. As a personal finance expert, Dan Macklin heads up the entrepreneur program at the company, as well as career management services.
Cofounders, Stripe
There's no slowing down the mobile-payment company Stripe. In July 2015 it received funding from a group of investors that included Visa and American Express. The $100 million round brought Stripe's valuation to $5 billion.
Stripe also launched two new products:Relay allows businesses to sell products on other apps, and Atlas helps international companies start businesses in the US. In March, Collison was among a group of American business leaders who joined President Barack Obama on a trip to Cuba, one of the countries Stripe launched in this year, to try to bridge the gap between the two countries.
Cofounders, Airbnb
Airbnb became one of the most valuable startups in the world in December after securing a massive $1.5 billion funding round, raising its valuation to $25.5 billion. But that's not enough for the billionaire founders' ambitious international expansion plan; they are now seeking a new round of funding that would raise Airbnb's valuation to $30 billion, triple what it was just two years ago. The room-renting company has listings in 191 countries and projects that 129 million nights will be booked by year's end.
There is just one thing stopping Airbnb from further growth: government roadblocks. In early June, for instance, the city of San Francisco backed Airbnb into a corner, requiring that the company list only properties that are registered with the city. Airbnb has sued the city to protect its renters who rely on their Airbnb income.
Cofounders, CEO (Iribe), Oculus VR
It's finally here! Four years after launching and two years after the $2 billion acquisition by Facebook, Oculus finally unleashed the Oculus Rift, its long-awaited virtual reality headset, to eager customers.
The product comes with a steep $600 price tag, but that didn't deter consumers from champing at the bit for it. Preorders opened in January and sold out almost immediately, leaving the company struggling to keep up. The headset also launched in retail stores this May, giving customers another chance to try to score one.
Founder, Social Capital
Outspoken Silicon Valley investor Palihapitiya didn't tread lightly this year. He decried the gender gap in tech, shared which startups he thought were "mostly crap," and publicly criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook. Through his more than $1 billion investment fund Social Capital, Palihapitiya is righteous in his conviction that today's generation has the opportunity to put "a massive dent in human suffering and make trillions of dollars in return."
The company he is most excited to put his money behind? Amazon, which he thinks could be a $3 trillion behemoth a decade from now. "We think this is the most incredible company being built today in the world," he said at an investment conference in May. Also this spring, the multimillionaire and part-owner of the Golden State Warriors launched a hedge fund, the impact of which remains to be seen.
Cofounders, Lyft
Lyft cofounders Green and Zimmer are looking toward the future of transportation after raising $1 billion in the company's latest funding round in January, more than doubling its valuation to $5.5 billion from $2.5 billion in 2015.
The ride-hailing app announced in May that it was testing a service allowing passengers to schedule Lyft rides up to 24 hours in advance; the company's chief rival, Uber, announced a similar service only a few weeks later. In January, Lyft signed a partnership with General Motors, along with a $500 million investment, that aims to pursue the development of self-driving cars.
Founder, CEO, and chairman, Twilio
When the cloud software company Twilio filed for an initial public offering, it broke Silicon Valley's 2016 tech startup drought. Originally expected to be valued at $12 to $14 a share, it exceeded expectations by pricing at $15 a share and has been on a tear since. A developer favorite — Lawson says 700,000 developers have used the software to date — Twilio integrates communications systems into existing apps like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. The behind-the-scenes software cuts costs and boosts efficiency for big tech ventures, allowing them to expand faster than if they had to build communications technologies on their own.
Founding partner and president, Y Combinator
Since taking over as president of the startup accelerator Y Combinator in early 2014, Altman has transformed the incubator into a more robust company, adding a research lab and late-stage growth fund. Acceptance into Y Combinator, which is known for producing elite Silicon Valley companies like Dropbox and Airbnb, serves as a sure-fire entrance into the competitive startup world.
Under Altman's leadership, the company committed $10 million to YC Research, a lab separate from YC's startup program focused on developing technology for the greater good that will eventually be available to anyone — free. Y Combinator also raised $700 million to further invest in select maturing startups it believes will succeed long term.
Altman's newest plan is to grow Y Combinator from 200 companies a year to 2,000, thanks to the YC Fellowship program.
Founder and CEO, Cruise
As tech companies and traditional car manufacturers vie for prevalence in the auto space, it feels like a race to see who will build the first mainstream self-driving car. And Vogt might be onto something big. His startup, Cruise, is developing technology that can retroactively transform any car into an autonomous one. His idea is so huge, in fact, that Vogt sold the startup to General Motors for more than $1 billion in March, making him the automaker's point person in Silicon Valley.
Cofounder and CEO, Stemcentrx
Previously a Goldman Sachs vice president and a senior scientist at OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, respectively, Slingerland and Dylla publicly launched Stemcentrx in September (after seven years in stealth mode) along with Reiner, a serial investor and former telecom executive. Their mission: to end cancer by targeting cancer-specific stem cells.
Less than a year later, the pharma giant AbbVie bought the biotech startup for $10.2 billion, when the company was valued at $5 billion, in one of the largest tech acquisitions ever. AbbVie showed special interest in Stemcentrx's lung-cancer-fighting drug Rova-T, which could grow the company's oncology business. AbbVie hopes to bring the drug to market by 2018.
Cofounder and CEO, Twitter and Square
As CEO of both Square and Twitter, Dorsey has his fingerprints all over Silicon Valley. In November he took the mobile payment company Square public, opening at $9 a share, lower than the $11 to $13 originally proposed. Though some outlets called it a flop, many entrepreneurs would kill for the company's $3 billion market capitalization and $1.3 billion in revenue.
And after returning to Twitter as interim CEO last July (and officially appointed CEO in October), Dorsey has spent the past year turning the struggling social network around by solidifying its mission and making product adjustments, including plans to incorporate more live video and crack down on the hateful abuse many users complain about.
Cofounder and CEO, Uber
Worth $68 billion, the ride-hailing service Uber, helmed by Kalanick, holds steady in its place as the most valuable private tech company in the world. Under Kalanick's leadership, the startup also raised the largest round of venture capital ever, bringing in$3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund in June.
Uber continues to expand and innovate, particularly through new services, such as UberEats, which brings meals to New York City customers, and UberRush, which helps businesses make deliveries. Kalanick leads the charge as Uber expands and conquers new markets, even as it faces fierce competition in China.
Cofounder and CEO, Facebook
It has been a big year for Zuckerberg. At Facebook's annual F8 developers conference in April, he laid out a 10-year road map for Facebook, detailing short-term plans to ramp up video, search, and apps, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, in the next five years. The company's long-term focus will include bigger projects like drones, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality.
Zuckerberg also became a dad last fall, prompting him to pledge to give away 99% of his $50 billion fortune throughout his lifetime. He will do so primarily through a new organization he cofounded with his wife, Priscilla Chan, called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is aimed at making long-term investments in causes and organizations that will improve health, education, and equality.
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