Aaron Iba (born June 18, 1983) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He is known for co-authoring

Etherpad Etherpad (previously known as EtherPad) is an open-source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants' edits in real-time, with the ability to display each ...

, co-founding AppJet, and for his work as a partner in

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...

. Iba graduated from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 2005 with a degree in Mathematics.

Background

Iba grew up in

Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs ...

and then attended the

. It was there that he teamed up with David Greenspan to win the annual Battlecode programming competition in 2003. Iba and Greenspan would go on to attend the

program, where they created AppJet and

. Iba would go on to become a partner in

, and was named "one of the best hackers among the YC alumni". Iba is also an

Angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

in over 10 companies, including

Meteor A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as micr ...

PlanGrid PlanGrid is a construction productivity software designed for onsite construction workers. PlanGrid digitises blueprints. It has features such as version control and collaboration tools such as field markups, progress photos and issues tracking. P ...

, and Light Table.

AppJet/Etherpad

In 2007, Iba co-founded AppJet, a company providing

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

development and hosting tools. AppJet received funding from notable investors including Paul Graham,

Paul Buchheit Paul T. Buchheit is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur who created Gmail. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested Google's former company motto ''Don't be evil'' in a 2000 ...

Trevor Blackwell Trevor Blackwell (born 4 November 1969, in Canada) is a computer programmer, engineer and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. Blackwell is a developer of humanoid robots. Dr. Blackwell is the founder and former CEO of Anybots and a partner at ...

, Mitch Kapor and

Scott Banister Scott Banister (born 1975) is an American entrepreneur, startup founder, and angel investor. He cofounded the anti-spam company IronPort, and he was an early advisor and board member at PayPal. He invented paid search advertising via keyword a ...

. AppJet failed to gain traction with developers, but in 2009 the company used its own tools to launch

, the first web-based realtime collaborative text editor. In 2009, AppJet was acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum. The

technology and team were merged into the

Google wave Google Wave, later known as Apache Wave, was a software framework for real-time collaborative editing online. Originally developed by Google and announced on May 28, 2009, it was renamed to ''Apache Wave'' when the project was adopted by the Apa ...

project.

Y Combinator

In 2011, Iba became one of 6 full-time partners in

, where he oversaw and participated in numerous investments in startup companies. In 2013, Iba left

to found PayGarden, an alternative payments company borne out of insights he gleaned as an investor in various online merchants.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iba, Aaron Living people 1983 births American computer programmers Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni People from Lexington, Massachusetts