Hooman Radfar (born July 14, 1980,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

) is an American entrepreneur and engineer. He is co-founder and CEO a
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 is a free social bookmarking service that can be integrated into a website with the use of a web widget. Once the widget is added, visitors to the website can bookmark or share an item using a variety of services, such as Facebook, MySpa ...

. AddThis provides 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. According to TechCrunch, AddThis was purchased by Oracle in 2016 for around $200 million.

Early life and education

At the time of the

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...

, 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 Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

. Radfar graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in 1998. In 2002, he graduated ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

'' from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

with degrees 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 Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

. In 2004, he earned his M.S. from the

Information Networking Institute The Information Networking Institute (INI) was established by Carnegie Mellon in 1989 as the nation's first research and education center devoted to information networking. As an integral department of the College of Engineering and a collaboratio ...

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

where he researched

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

, multi-agent systems, and their applications to computational economics.

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. Clearspring launched the first content sharing and tracking service for web publishers in 2006. The company acquired AddThis in 2008, then XGraph in 2011. Clearspring was rebranded as

in 2012. AddThis was acquired by Oracle in 2016.

Expa

In 2014, Radfar moved to San Francisco, joining Expa as an EIR. He became a founding partner at the firm alongside Uber co-founder

Garrett Camp Garrett Camp (born October 4, 1978) is a Canadian billionaire entrepreneur. He has helped build a series of companies, including founding StumbleUpon, a web-discovery tool; co-founding Uber; and founding Expa, a startup studio. Camp is chairma ...

and Foursquare co-founder

Naveen Selvadurai Naveen Selvadurai (born January 27, 1982 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) is an American internet entrepreneur and co-founder of location-based social networking site Foursquare.com. Until recently, he was working at startup studio Expa which was f ...

in 2015. He led the seed investment program at Expa before founding Collective.

Collective

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

Other ventures

Radfar i
an investor
in 40+ companies including Convoy, Onfido, Sweetgreen, Unit, Fabric, SpaceX and Uber via hi
investment platform 10e9

Patents

*Method and apparatus for widget and widget-container platform adaptation and distribution, (2008) - now abandoned. *Methods and apparatus for management of inter-widget interactions, (2010) - now abandoned. *Method and apparatus for widget-container hosting and generation, (2011). *Method and apparatus for data processing, (2012).

References

External links

Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Radfar, Hooman Living people 1980 births American computer programmers Carnegie Mellon University alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni American computer businesspeople American technology chief executives Iranian emigrants to the United States Silicon Valley people American technology company founders