Today we have a chat between our startup grind New York chapter directer peter crysdale and Max Krohn, co-founder of okCupid, SparkNotes, and Keybase.io. 

He wrote the OK Web Server (OKWS) that OkCupid uses, as well as the Tame system for management of asynchronous events.

Max graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, and has a PhD from MIT in Computer Science.

Before Homebrew, I led consumer product management at YouTube, starting when it was acquired by Google. I originally joined Google in 2003, managing product and sales efforts for AdSense, Google‘s contextual advertising business. My first job in Silicon Valley was as the founding product and marketing guy at Linden Lab. Before graduate school, I was a management consultant and also spent a year at Late Night with Conan O‘ Brien. My parents are proud of my BA in History from Vassar and MBA from Stanford University.

Today we have Jeff burton, founding employee of Electonric arts and former Executive director of Cal berkeley’s SkyDeck Accelerator at Startup Grind Sacramento. Jeff was one of the founding team members of EA, overseeing international business development. I hadn’t known this previously but EA was started by a group of marketing execs from companies like Atari and Apple who focused on working with small publishers in the beginning and really transformed the way that games were presented to consumers. Lots of really interesting facts about the early days of both Atari and Electronic Arts. Fun fact our Founder, Derek Andersen worked for 5 years at EA before founding Startup Grind. 

Zach sims is the co-founder of codecademy which offers free online coding classes in seven different programming languages. As of January 2014, the site had over 24 million users who had completed over 100 million exercises. Zach launched the company with co-founder  Ryan Bubinski after dropping out of Columbia University. They then raised venture funding from Y Combinator, Union Square Ventures, and several other well known investors. 

Spencer Rascoff (born October 24, 1975) is the CEO of Zillow, an online real estate company. He previously co-founded Hotwire.com in 1999. He was named one of America’s 20 Most Powerful CEOs 40 and Under by Forbes magazine in 2012[1] and 2013[2] and was the recipient of Ernst & Young’s National Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 Services Award.[3]

Rascoff grew up in New York and then Los Angeles, where he attended Harvard-Westlake. He received his B.A. from Harvard University before working as a private equity investor at TPG Capital and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, and Allen & Company.

Today we have a great chat from our Washington DC chapter. Startup Grind’s COO Brian Park sits down with well known congressman Darrell Issa. Congressmen Issa  is the Republican U.S. Representative for California's 49th congressional district, serving since 2001.

Issa was an entrepreneur and founder himself prior to entering politics.  He made 450 million dollars as the ceo of the directed electronics which made car alarms most famous of which was distinctive sounding. viper car alarm system. he also is the wealthiest member of congress. 

Issa sits on several house committees that deal with issues important to entrepreneurs. In his chat with brian he goes through his opinions on patent reform, patent trolls, immigration reform, net neutrality and much more. 

Matt was responsible for iPod software development at Apple, from concept to production. He is passionate about mobile products, loves team building and rapid productization. Matt earned his BS and MS degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.

At age 22, Ramona was hit by a drunk driver while running during training for the Marines. She spent 18 months in a coma and was blind for the next eleven years. This tragic experience became a foundation for lifelong learning and relearning. 

In 2005, she created The Source, one of the first online social learning solutions for educators, students and parents. 

In 2007, Ramona founded SynapticMash, a company that developed educational solutions. SynapticMash was acquired by the British interactive learning company Promethean World, where Ramona became the Chief Science Officer helping to lead expansion into the global education marketplace.

Patrick has the most valuable of Valley technology skillsets. He's a technical prodigy having won numerous prestigious awards including Ireland's 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2005, a national science competition which boasts hundreds of submissions each year from the country's brightest young scientists. Today he is tackling one of the hardest problems of the web which is online payments. Be sure to watch and learn about what he is doing to tackle this problem, the opportunities in Ireland, and what the future holds.

Vinod grew up dreaming of being an entrepreneur, despite growing up in an Indian Army household with no business or technology connections. Since the age of 16, when he first heard about Intel starting up, he dreamt of starting his own technology company. Upon graduating with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Vinod failed, at age 20, to start a soy milk company to service the many people in India who did not have refrigerators. He came instead to the U.S. and got his master’s in biomedical engineering at