Adam D’angelo: How Mark Zuckerberg’s school friend became co-founder of Quora
Adam D’Angelo founded Quora in 2009 along with his friend Charlie Cheever. They both had previously worked for Facebook. In contrast to the website’s launch in June of the same year, Adam D’Angelo was forced to quit in January 2010. The firm was valued at $86 million when it received an investment from Benchmark Capital in March 2010.
Adam D’Angelo is known as the Co-founder and CEO of the Mountain View, California-based Quora. He was Facebook’s vice president of engineering and chief technology officer from 2004 to 2008. In the company’s Series B round of funding, he contributed $20 million of his personal cash to Quora. He serves as a director on the OpenAI board of directors.
Adam seems to keep himself away from the limelight and there is not much information available about him on the internet. However, we managed to get some of the crucial insights of Quora co-founder’s life. Keep reading on to know more about his success story.
Quick Facts:
- Name: Adam D’Angelo
- Nationality: American
- Net Worth: USD 600 million as of 2016(Forbes)
- Education: High School-Phillips Exeter Academy, B.S. in Computer Science, California Institute of Technology
- Occupation: CEO of Quora
- Designations: CEO
- Date of Birth:21, August 1984
- Age:37
- Place of Birth: United States
- Marital Status: Unknown
- Spouse’s Name: Unknown
- Children: No
- Spoken Languages: English
- Hobbies: Coding and Investing
Early Life:
The American online entrepreneur Adam D’Angelo was born on August 21, 1984 in the USA. Along with Mark Zuckerberg, Adam had attended the “Phillips Exeter Academy” for his high school education in 2000. Between 2002 and 2006, Adam also finished his bachelor’s degree in computer science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Career:
Adam and Mark were latecomers to the Phillip Exeter Academy, transferred to the school in the 11th grade, and as a result, they hit it off right away and became friends. Together, they created the “Synapse Media Player” music suggestion program, which offered music based on the user’s preferences. Soon, Synapse was a big success and was bought by Microsoft. After this stint, Adam proceeded to Caltech to continue his education, where he also founded the website “BuddyZoo.” Users were able to upload their AIM buddy list and contrast it with that of other users.
In order to spend a semester assisting Mark in the early days of Facebook, he had also temporarily suspended his academic pursuits. Adam made the decision to join Mark Zuckerberg’s founding team of The Facebook as a vice president after completing his studies (Engineering).
While working in Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg he understood that “Execution was significantly more crucial than an idea.” With that in mind, he left his position as CTO at Facebook in 2008 to create Quora. Before Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012, D’Angelo was an advisor and investor in it. Also, he joined OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018.
What is Quora?
Quora, to put it simply, is a question-and-answer website where users may post questions, get answers, modify, and edit the answers. Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, two former Facebook workers, co-founded it in June 2009, and it became publicly accessible in June 2010.
Quora’s authenticity is one of its best features. It is a venue for exchanging knowledge rather than information, where one can expect to get some genuinely sincere responses that are supported by facts and evidence. Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Ashton Kutcher, Marc Andreessen, Dustin Moskovitz, Jimmy Wales, Stephen Fry, Avicii, John Green (author), Adrián Lamo, Hillary Clinton, etc. are some well-known members of the Quora community.
So, for example, if you ask a question about Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, you may anticipate the real Jimmy Wales to show up and respond!
Although Quora functions differently, it is similar to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, and Answers.com. Real identities must be used, and you must either make an account there or connect in with your Facebook or Google account. You can follow topics, questions, and people, and your feed will reflect their activity as a result. You have the option to comment on an answer, as well as Upvote or Downvote it.
By scrolling through the random questions on the home screen, also known as “Read,” you can start using Quora because of its comparatively straightforward and self-explanatory design. You will see all of the most popular questions under the themes you have selected to follow on this screen.
Awards and Honours:
- He competed in the USA Computing Olympiad in 2001 as a high school student and finished in eighth place.
- In 2002, he also took home a silver medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics.
- California Institute of Technology Beavers (team of three), World Finalists in 2003 and 2004; North American Champions in 2003,
- World Finals Silver medallist in 2004, and World Finals Co-Coach in 2005 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC).
- In the Topcoder Collegiate Challenge’s Algorithm Coding Competition in 2005, he was placed among the top 24 competitors.
- In its 2010 article on the “Smartest individuals in tech,” Fortune magazine listed D’Angelo as a runner-up.
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