# Ilya Sukhar

> Ilya Sukhar is a San Francisco-based investor at Matrix and co-founder and former CEO of Parse, the mobile backend company acquired by Facebook in 2013. An early Ooyala engineer and Etacts’s first employee, he later led developer products at Facebook and served as a part-time Y Combinator partner. His projects include Vimium and a Piedmont housing-data website.

- **Role:** General Partner at Matrix
- **Organizations:** Matrix, Parse, Facebook, Y Combinator, Etacts, Ooyala
- **Education:** B.S., Computer Science, Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University, M.Eng., Computer Science, Cornell University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Parse and served as its CEO through its 2013 Facebook acquisition., Led Facebook’s developer products., Became a part-time Y Combinator partner in 2014.

## Career timeline

- **2005** — President of Cornell’s Undergraduate Society for Intellectual Property.
- **2007** — Earns undergraduate degree at Cornell; teaching assistant for Foundations of Artificial Intelligence in fall 2007.
- **2008** — Earns Cornell M.Eng.; begins career as an early Ooyala engineer.
- **2010** — First employee at Etacts, a YC W10 company later acquired by Salesforce.
- **2011** — Co-founds Parse with Kevin Lacker, James Yu and Tikhon Bernstam; participates in YC S11.
- **2013** — Facebook acquires Parse; Sukhar continues running the company inside Facebook.
- **2014** — Appointed part-time Y Combinator partner on December 3.
- **2015** — Leaves Facebook.
- **2016** — Joins Matrix as general partner, announced August 9.
- **2020** — Publishes Angel Investing: Check Sizes in August.
- **2025** — Appears on the 1st10 podcast, released March 28.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Parse and served as its CEO through its 2013 Facebook acquisition.
- Led Facebook’s developer products.
- Became a part-time Y Combinator partner in 2014.
- General partner at Matrix since 2016.
- Publicly lists angel investments in Scale AI, Applied Intuition, GitLab and Airtable.
- Named alongside Phil Crosby in Vimium’s authors and maintainers credits.

## Latest updates

- **2025-03** — On the March 28 episode of the 1st10 podcast, discussed his career, technical founders, resilience and conflict resolution in early teams.

## Links

- Website: https://ilya.sukhar.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyasukhar/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/ilyasu
- GitHub: https://github.com/ilya

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ilya-sukhar
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-22