Hooman Radfar

Hooman Radfar
Radfar, 2013
Born (1980-07-14) July 14, 1980 (age 44)
London, England
EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania (B.S.E/B.A.)
Carnegie Mellon University (M.S.)
OccupationEntrepreneur

Hooman Radfar (born July 14, 1980, London, England) is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He is co-founder and CEO at Collective, the first online back-office platform designed for freelancers, consultants and other businesses-of-one. He is currently a Venture Partner at Expa, a San Francisco-based start-up venture firm and studio where he was a founding partner. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of AddThis. AddThis provided the most widely used marketing tools for web site creators. According to web measurement firm ComScore, in 2015 the platform was ranked #1 in AdFocus, reaching over 97% of users in the United States ahead of Google, Yahoo and Facebook.[1] According to TechCrunch, AddThis was purchased by Oracle in 2016 for around $200 million.[2]

Early life and education

At the time of the Iranian Revolution, his family immigrated to England in 1979. Radfar was born in London in 1980. His family later moved to the United States where he was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Radfar graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in 1998. In 2002, he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in computer science and economics. In 2004, he earned his M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University where he researched social networking, multi-agent systems, and their applications to computational economics.[3]

Career

AddThis

In 2004, Radfar and Austin Fath founded Clearspring Technologies to create a platform for website developers to grow their traffic and engagement, based on their graduate research in web services and social networking at Carnegie Mellon.[4] Clearspring launched the first content sharing and tracking service designed for web publishers in 2006.[5] The company acquired AddThis in 2008,[6] then XGraph in 2011. Clearspring was rebranded as AddThis in 2012. AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016.

Expa

In 2014, Radfar moved to San Francisco,[7] joining Expa as an EIR.[8] He became a founding partner at the firm alongside Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai in 2015. He led the investment program at Expa before founding Collective.

Collective

Radfar co-founded Collective with Ugur Kaner and Bugra Akcay. The company officially launched September 29, 2020[9] and is funded by General Catalyst Investors, QED Investors, Expa, Gradient Ventures, and Sound Ventures.

Other ventures

Radfar is an investor in 40+ companies including Uber, Sweetgreen, Sleeper, Onfido, Unit, Fabric, SpaceX and more via his investment platform 10e9.

Patents

  • Method and apparatus for widget and widget-container platform adaptation and distribution, (2008) [10]
  • Methods and apparatus for management of inter-widget interactions, (2010) [11]
  • Method and apparatus for widget-container hosting and generation, (2011).[12]
  • Method and apparatus for data processing, (2012).[13]

References

  1. ^ "comScore Ranks the Top 50 U.S. Digital Media Properties for January 2015". comScore, Inc. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
  2. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (5 January 2016). "Oracle Buys Audience Tracking Firm AddThis For Around $200M". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
  3. ^ "LinkedIn Public Profile".
  4. ^ Shropshire, Corilyn (June 6, 2007). "Clearspring's 'widget' deal may help boost NBC". Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Retrieved December 14, 2013.
  5. ^ Cashmore, Pete (November 6, 2006). "Clearspring to Track Widgets Across Netvibes, Myspace, and More". Mashable. Retrieved December 14, 2013.
  6. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (September 30, 2008). "Widget Platform Clearspring Acquires AddThis". ReadWrite. Retrieved December 14, 2013.
  7. ^ "AddThis founder Hooman Radfar moves west - Washington Business Journal". Washington Business Journal. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
  8. ^ Crook, Jordan (23 September 2014). "Expa Brings On Hooman Radfar, AddThis Founder, As San Francisco EIR". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
  9. ^ "Collective launches to be the ultimate 'back office' platform for freelancers". VentureBeat. 2020-09-29. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
  10. ^ US 2008222232, Allen, Stewart O.; Cosby, Scott F. & Debutts, Hasseltine R. et al., "Method and apparatus for widget and widget-container platform adaptation and distribution", published 2008-09-11 
  11. ^ US 2010100605, Allen, Stewart O.; Cosby, Scott F. & Fath, John A. et al., "Methods and apparatus for management of inter-widget interactions", published 2010-04-22 
  12. ^ US 8056092, Allen, Stewart O.; Cosby, Scott F. & Fath, John A. et al., "Method and apparatus for widget-container hosting and generation", published 2011-11-08, assigned to Clearspring Technologies Inc. 
  13. ^ US 8266274, Allen, Stewart O.; Cosby, Scott F. & Greene, Dylan J. et al., "Method and apparatus for data processing", published 2012-09-11, assigned to Clearspring Technologies Inc.