Aditya Agarwal (born 30 May 1982) is a
software engineer
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...
and venture investor. Agarwal was an early engineer at Facebook where he wrote the Facebook Search Engine. He was also Facebook's first Director of Product Engineering. After leaving Facebook in early 2011, he started Cove, a modern collaboration software company. Agarwal is also on the board of Flipkart.
Early life and education
Agarwal was born in India. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother was a homemaker. Agarwal moved with his family to many countries:
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
,
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
and
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
, and eventually settled in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
. He was interested in computers and programming since a young age, and took programming classes while in Indonesia.
After completing high school, Agarwal went to
Carnegie Mellon University to pursue computer science.
[ Agarwal obtained a Bachelor's and master's degree in Computer Science. Agarwal's post-graduate research focused on automatic clustering and segmentation of email corpora.
]
Career
Facebook
After graduating CMU in 2004, Agarwal saw many of his classmates move to Wall Street (the financial sector), but he wanted to enter the technology sector, so he began work at Oracle Inc in the San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
. In 2005, he met Mark Zuckerberg after being introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Zuckerberg, who had started Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
in 2004, impressed Agarwal, leading Agarwal to begin work at Facebook. Agarwal also persuaded his former CMU colleague and future wife Ruchi Sanghvi to work at Facebook.
Agarwal and Sanghvi worked at Facebook till 2010.[
]
Cove and Dropbox
After leaving Facebook, Agarwal and his wife Ruchi Sanghvi, co-founded Cove, a stealth collaboration startup. In February 2012, it was announced that Dropbox was acquiring Cove, and that both Agarwal and Sanghvi were joining Dropbox.[
In October 2016, Agarwal was promoted from vice-president of engineering to chief technology officer (CTO), replacing co-founder ]Arash Ferdowsi
Arash Ferdowsi ( fa, آرش فردوسی, born October 7, 1985) is an Iranian-American billionaire entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Dropbox.
Early life and education
Ferdowsi was born in Overland Park, Kansas, United States on 7 October 19 ...
.
In July 2017, Agarwal announced in a Facebook post that he was leaving Dropbox, while expressing excitement about its trajectory.
South Park Commons Fund and Iconiq
Agarwal is a partner at South Park Commons Fund, an early-stage venture firm. He is also a partner at ICONIQ Capital, a growth stage venture firm.
Other
In 2019, Agarwal announced that he is a senior advisor and Chair of the Technology Committee for the upcoming 2022 Fifa Football World Cup in Qatar.
Agarwal recently published a book on Technical Hiring and Recruiting.
Board Memberships
Philanthropy
Agarwal was listed as one of the founders of FWD.us
FWD.us is a 501(c)(4) pro-immigration lobbying group based in the United States that advocates for prison reform, status for undocumented immigrants, particularly for DACA recipients, and higher levels of immigration visas, particularly for H-1 ...
, a 501(c)(4) lobbying group formed in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
to promote immigration reform
Immigration reform is change to the current immigration policy of a country. In its strict definition, ''reform'' means "to change into an improved form or condition, by amending or removing faults or abuses". In the political sense, "immigration ...
, improve education, and facilitate technological breakthroughs in the United States. 24 The group launched on 11 April 2013. 25
He was also on the board of the Anita Borg Institute, the leading organization advocating for gender equality in the technology workforce.
He also serves on the advisory board of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Personal life
Agarwal is married to engineer Ruchi Sanghvi, who was also his co-worker at Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
and Dropbox
Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 ...
and co-founder with him of Cove (which was acquired by Dropbox). The couple married in 2010 in India, with Mark Zuckerberg attending the wedding.
See also
* Ruchi Sanghvi
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Agarwal, Aditya
21st-century Indian engineers
Living people
Computer engineers
Facebook employees
1982 births