# David Lieb

> David Lieb is a General Partner at Y Combinator who co-founded Bump - the app that let phones share data by physically bumping together, reaching 150 million users before being acquired by Google in 2013. After the acquisition, his team's unreleased photo-sharing project became Google Photos, which Lieb led as Senior Director for nine years until it reached over 1 billion users. Now at YC, he mentors early-stage founders drawing on his rare trifecta of experience: consumer hit, big-tech product leadership, and venture capital.

- **Role:** General Partner at Y Combinator
- **Organizations:** Y Combinator, Google, Bump Technologies
- **From:** Dallas area, Texas, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, M.S. Computer Science / AI research, Stanford University, MBA (left to found Bump), University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- **Known for:** Co-founded Bump Technologies, reaching 150+ million users and becoming 'the billionth app downloaded on iOS', Led Google Photos from inception to 1 billion users in under 4 years as Senior Director, Built Google Photos in under 9 months from a small acquired team

## Career timeline

- **2002-2006** — Studied Electrical Engineering at Princeton; pitched for the baseball team
- **2006-2008** — Researcher at Stanford AI Lab with Sebastian Thrun; software engineer at Texas Instruments
- **2008** — Began MBA at University of Chicago Booth; left to co-found Bump with Andy Huibers through YC S09
- **2009** — Bump launched; quickly hit tens of millions of downloads, featured in Apple's 'There's An App For That' campaign
- **2012** — TIME magazine named Bump one of the apps that helped define the iPhone; 150M+ users worldwide
- **2013** — Google acquired Bump for ~$35M; entire 25-person team joined Google; Bump app shut down by year end
- **2014** — Lieb's team's unreleased photo-sharing app became the foundation for Google Photos
- **2015** — Google Photos launched publicly; Lieb served as Senior Director and product lead
- **2019** — Google Photos reached 1 billion users in under 4 years - one of fastest-growing consumer products ever
- **2022** — Left Google after 9 years to join Y Combinator as Visiting Group Partner
- **2023** — Transitioned from Visiting Group Partner to full-time Group Partner at YC after three successful batches
- **2024** — Promoted to General Partner at Y Combinator; portfolio companies collectively valued at $10B+

## Achievements

- Co-founded Bump Technologies, reaching 150+ million users and becoming 'the billionth app downloaded on iOS'
- Led Google Photos from inception to 1 billion users in under 4 years as Senior Director
- Built Google Photos in under 9 months from a small acquired team
- Advised YC companies now collectively worth over $10 billion
- Conducted 500+ office hours across three YC batches
- Early angel investor in Flexport (described as his best-performing investment)
- Part of YC S09 batch as a founder; now a General Partner at the same institution

## Latest updates

- **2024-12** — YC published 'How David Lieb Turned A Failed Startup Into Google Photos' podcast episode on Backstory series
- **2024-09** — Portfolio company Kubecost had an exit on September 17, 2024
- **2024-03** — Y Combinator last raised at this date per funding data
- **2023-01** — Promoted to full-time Group Partner at Y Combinator after three batches as Visiting Partner
- **2022-01** — Joined Y Combinator as Visiting Group Partner after leaving Google

## Links

- Website: https://www.ycombinator.com/people/david-lieb
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlieb
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/dflieb

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/david-lieb
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-09