# Michael Yan

> Michael Yan is the co-founder and CEO of Simplify (YC W21), a San Francisco-based AI-powered job search platform that has helped over 1 million job seekers apply to roughly 100 million job openings. A Morgantown, West Virginia native, Yan dropped out of Stanford to build Simplify after recognizing that students everywhere were lost in the job application chaos. He previously engineered AI/ML systems at Meta, conducted research at MIT CSAIL, and interned at Harvard Medical School. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2023 (Consumer Technology), Yan has built a 181,000+ follower audience on LinkedIn by sharing brutally practical job search advice - including the URL hack that landed him offers at Meta and Microsoft. Simplify has raised $4.35M from Craft Ventures, Y Combinator, and Soma Capital.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Simplify
- **Organizations:** Simplify, Y Combinator, Meta (Facebook), Coupa Software, MIT CSAIL, Harvard Medical School, Stanford University
- **From:** Morgantown, West Virginia, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Computer Science (incomplete - dropped out), Stanford University, High School Diploma, Morgantown High School
- **Known for:** Forbes 30 Under 30, Consumer Technology (2023), Co-founded Simplify (YC W21) and scaled to 1M+ users with a ~7-person team, Helped users apply to 100 million job openings

## Career timeline

- **2018** — Graduated Morgantown High School; enrolled at Stanford University
- **2019** — Researcher at MIT CSAIL (MIT App Inventor Labs)
- **2020** — Intern at Harvard Medical School; founded Simplify with Ethan Horoschak and Rushil Srivastava
- **2021** — Dropped out of Stanford; Simplify accepted into Y Combinator Winter 2021 batch
- **2022** — Raised $1.2M seed round; scaled to 80,000+ active users
- **2022** — Software Engineer / AI-ML at Meta (Facebook)
- **2022** — Data Scientist at Coupa Software
- **2022** — Named Forbes 30 Under 30 (Consumer Technology, class of 2023)
- **2024** — Raised $3M seed round led by Craft Ventures
- **2024** — Simplify surpasses 1 million job seekers and 100 million applications processed
- **2025** — LinkedIn audience grows to 181,000+ followers; ranked #90 LinkedIn creator in the US

## Achievements

- Forbes 30 Under 30, Consumer Technology (2023)
- Co-founded Simplify (YC W21) and scaled to 1M+ users with a ~7-person team
- Helped users apply to 100 million job openings
- Raised $4.35M from Craft Ventures, Y Combinator, and Soma Capital
- Built 181,000+ LinkedIn following ranked #90 in the US (Top 1%)
- Favikon influence score: 8,239 points (Top 3% globally)
- Developed viral LinkedIn URL hack for finding recently posted jobs
- Landed offers at Meta and Microsoft using his own job search techniques

## Latest updates

- **2025-03** — Featured in Fortune for his LinkedIn URL hack for finding recently-posted jobs
- **2025-01** — Published in-depth guide on How to Get an Internship at Meta on Simplify blog
- **2024-02** — Simplify raises $3M seed round led by Craft Ventures, covered by TechCrunch
- **2024-02** — Disclosed on LinkedIn that he is the lowest-paid employee at Simplify
- **2023-01** — Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology category

## Links

- Website: https://michaelyan.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myan
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/michaelyan22
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeyan/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/michael-yan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-07