Alan Schaaf (born October 21, 1987) is an American entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and CEO of the

image sharing Image sharing, or photo sharing, is the publishing or transfer of digital photos online. Image sharing websites offer services such as uploading, hosting, managing and sharing of photos (publicly or privately). This function is provided through ...

app and website

Imgur Imgur ( , stylized as imgur) is an American online image sharing and image hosting service with a focus on social gossip that was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009. The service has hosted viral images and meme, particularly those posted on Reddit ...

Early life

Schaaf was born in

Granville, Ohio Granville is a village in Licking County, Ohio, United States. The population was 5,646 at the 2010 census. The village is located in a rural area of rolling hills in central Ohio. It is east of Columbus, the state capital, and west of Newar ...

. He attended

Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subseq ...

and received a bachelor's degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

Career

Schaaf founded Imgur when he was an undergraduate at Ohio University in 2009. Imgur started as a simple image-sharing website and evolved into the largest image-sharing community in the world with more than 150 million

monthly active users Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...

in 2015. Under Schaaf's leadership, Imgur was bootstrapped and profitable for five years, scaling organically to millions of users before receiving $40 million in investment from

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...

in 2014. In 2015 Schaaf was listed as one of ''Forbes 30 Under 30.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schaaf, Alan American Internet company founders Living people Ohio University alumni 1987 births People from Granville, Ohio 21st-century American businesspeople