The Influential First Hires of Tech Giants

THE INFLUENTIAL "FIRST HIRÈS OF TECH GIANTS PRESENTED BY ADZUNA Founders Microsoft Bill Gates, Paul Allen 1976-1984 • Helped develop the BASIC programming language • Left when Microsoft had gotten 'too big' - it had around 400 employees • Had a second run at Microsoft from 2000-2011 after it acquired the company he was working for Marc McDonald TODAY • Software architect at PaperG Founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne 1977-1997 • Helped write Apple's first business plan and hired its first CEO o Invested $250,000 into the company for a 30% stake TODAY Mike Markkula • Invests in startups and philanthropy Founder amazon Jeff Bezos 1994-1999 o Hired as VP of Research and Development when Amazon 'existed only as a spreadsheetť • Wrote first generation software systems and hired and ran the initial software team Shel Kaphan • Called 'the most important person ever in the history of Amazon.com' by Jeff Bezos A TODAY • Pursues philanthropy and personal interests Founders Jerry Yang, David Filo YAHOO! 1995-2003, • Knew Jerry Yang from Stanford University • Helped write the company's initial business plan • Departed as Chief Product Officer Tim Brady TODAY • Managing Partner of Imagine K12 debay Founders Jeffrey Skoll 1996-1998 eBay's first president and full-time employee o Was responsible for writing the auction site's initial business plan A TODAY • Founder of Participant Media, a production company that funds 'socially relevant' (and Oscar nominated) films Marc McDonald Google Founders Larry Page, Sergey Brin 1998-2012 • Met Google founders while studying for a PhD at Stanford University o Helped build the search engine and mentored new engineers TODAYO Craig Silverstein • Dean of Infrastructure at the Khan Academy facebook. Founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes 2004-2009 • Built the social networking site's hardware infrastructure TODAY Taner Haliciouglu • Lectures at UC San Diego and serves on its Alumni Board of Directors Founders David Karp tumblr. 6 2007-2010 o Initially worked for Karp on web development for clients before becoming lead developer at Tumblr • Confesses to not being the 'idea guy', but rather the 'idea editor' Marco Arment TODAY • Has launched and sold startups Instapaper and The Magazine Founders Dropbox Drew Houston, Arash Ferdowsi 2007-2012 • Met founders at MIT • Built a lot of opbox's back-end web functionality Aston Motes TODAY • Founded startup Assorted Bits and works as chief software architect at Merchbar Founders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk airbnb 2009-2012 Airbnb's first employee's role straddled operations and product TODAYO Nick Grandy • Co-founder of Outschool Founders OInstagram Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger 2010-2014 • Kept early users happy and engaged as community manager TODAY Josh Riedel • Enjoying his millions Founders Travis Kalanick, Garrett Camp UBER |2010-PRESENT • Landed his job by responding to a tweet: 'Looking for a business development & product badass' o Became the company's first CEO, but today works as head of global operations TAXI Ryan Graves Pinterest Founders Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, and Ben Silbermann 2010-PRESENT • Caught Silbermann's attention at a Meet-up event they both attended • Describes his title as 'Garbage Collector' on LinkedIn o Is now one of more than 200 engineers at the company Yash Nelapati P Founders Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, Reginald Brown IV 2012-PRESENT • A'mutual friend' introduced Spiegel to Kravitz • Kravitz and Smith were both software engineers at their own Startup, Raunk • The pair were instrumental in bringing the app to Android David Kravitz Daniel Smith SOURCES http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bezoint-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/who-the-first-employees-at-google- apple-and-facebook-are-2014-10?r=US&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.in/wheres-employee-1-now-what-the-first- hires-at-apple-google-and-other-top-tech-companies-are-up-to/taner- halicioglu-was-facebooks-first-real-employee-outside-of-the-founders- he-juggled-a-bunch-of-operations-roles-/slideshow/44954200.cms http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/239115 http://innov8tiv.com/aston-motes-speaks-diversity-technology/ linkedin.com/ http://www.linkedin.com/ http://www.marco.org/2013/05/20/one-person-product http://www.riomirada.com/uncategorized/2013/02/01/alum-obtains-fame-but-only-for-up-to-10-seconds/ http://www.techinsider.io/the-funny-story-of-how-pinterest-hired-its-founding-engineer-2015-7 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324590904578289603825239458 Oadzuna http://www.adzuna.co.uk