# Kevin Wang

> Kevin Wang is the founder and chairman of FOSSA, formerly its CEO, and the creator of TLDRLegal. His work spans open source license compliance, software supply chain visibility and dependency maintenance. A 2013 Thiel Fellow and 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he also serves as a strategic advisor at OSS Capital.

- **Role:** Founder & Chairman at FOSSA
- **Organizations:** FOSSA, TLDRLegal, OSS Capital, Cloudera, Techstars, XSeed Capital, Thiel Fellowship
- **Education:** Secondary education, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Studied computer science; left without completing the degree, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Created TLDRLegal, a resource explaining software licenses in plain English., 2013 Thiel Fellow., 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.

## Career timeline

- **2012** — IMSA graduate; worked at Excelerate Labs in Chicago and created TLDRLegal; planned to enter UC Berkeley.
- **2013** — Selected as a Thiel Fellow; early engineering work included Cloudera’s HBase Browser.
- **2015** — Founded FOSSA; some early investor accounts date the company to 2014.
- **2017** — FOSSA announced a $2.2 million seed round.
- **2018** — Recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30; participated in the Commons Clause licensing initiative.
- **2019** — Announced FOSSA’s $8.5 million Series A and more than 10 million platform scans.
- **2020** — FOSSA announced a $23.2 million Series B and more than 90 million cumulative scans.
- **2024** — Announced FOSSA’s acquisition of StackShare.
- **2025** — Announced the EdgeBit acquisition and welcomed Allan Friedman as a senior advisor.
- **2026** — Transitioned from CEO to chairman; Aaron Williams became CEO.

## Achievements

- Created TLDRLegal, a resource explaining software licenses in plain English.
- 2013 Thiel Fellow.
- 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree.
- Built FOSSA from a developer-tools startup into a software supply chain platform serving enterprise customers.
- Led FOSSA through its publicly announced 2019 Series A and 2020 Series B.

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Announced his transition to chairman and Aaron Williams’s appointment as CEO; month corroborated by the public LinkedIn post identifier timestamp.
- **2025-10** — Welcomed Allan Friedman as a FOSSA senior advisor on October 29.
- **2025-09** — Announced EdgeBit’s acquisition on September 29 and outlined dependency-update automation on September 30.

## Links

- Website: https://kwa.ng/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinxizhao
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/kevinverse
- GitHub: https://github.com/xizhao

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/kevin-wang
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-14