consumer-apps
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Scott Lahman Kept Betting on the Phone's Next Act
From a prescient Nokia meeting to JAMDAT's $680 million exit and textPlus's pending Truecaller deal, Lahman's career is a study in spotting the next job a phone will do - then doing the patient work to make it ordinary.
Greg Cohn
Greg Cohn is the co-founder and CEO of Ad Hoc Labs, the Los Angeles product studio behind Burner, the app that pioneered disposable, on-demand phone numbers back in 2012. A former Yahoo product leader who spent his early career in book publishing and content strategy, Cohn built Burner after his first app failed, turning that stumble into a durable, privacy-focused business that has outlived most of its venture-funded peers. He is an advocate for building consumer apps that deliver lasting value over chasing hypergrowth.
Yidi Campbell
Yidi Campbell is the founder and CEO of Indyx, a San Francisco connected-wardrobe platform that lets people catalog, style, and resell the clothes they already own. A Georgetown business graduate, she moved from investment banking at Credit Suisse to corporate development at Gap Inc. and strategy at Athleta before launching Indyx in 2021 to fight fashion overconsumption from the closet outward.
Prerna Gupta
Prerna Gupta is the founder and CEO of Hooked, the chat-fiction app that turned bite-sized text-message stories into a habit for over 100 million Gen Z readers and topped the App Store in 25 countries. A Stanford economics grad who once ran consulting decks before building apps, she co-created the music hits LaDiDa and Songify under her startup Khush (acquired by Smule, where she became Chief Product Officer) before reinventing fiction for the smartphone generation. She describes Hooked as 'books for the Snapchat generation' and her own role as a product CEO who would rather build with her team than work a room.
Jeff Feldman
Jeff Feldman is the CEO of Imprint, the New York visual-learning app that turns dense nonfiction into illustrated, bite-sized lessons. He joined in 2019 as Imprint's Founding Head of Product, became Chief Product Officer, and stepped into the CEO seat in 2024 as founder Daniel Terry moved to Executive Chairman. Before Imprint he built product at Resy and Pronoun, and studied at Harvard. Under his watch Imprint became a Google Best App of the Year and an Apple Editor's Choice.
Ben Springwater
Ben Springwater is the Co-Founder and CEO of Matter, a beautifully designed reading app that consolidates articles, newsletters, and emails into one distraction-free experience. A Stanford MBA and former Nextdoor product lead, Ben built Matter through Y Combinator's Summer 2020 batch and raised $9.15M from Google Ventures and others. Known for his philosophy that 'the details add up,' he steers Matter toward slow, steady growth for discerning readers rather than chasing scale - a conviction tested and hardened by personal health challenges in 2024 that led him to reimagine both his company and his life.
Jesse Pickard
Jesse Pickard is the Founder and CEO of The Mind Company (formerly Elevate Labs), the studio behind Elevate (Apple's App of the Year 2014), Balance (Google's App of the Year 2021), and Spark - a portfolio of science-backed mental fitness apps with over 80 million downloads. A designer-turned-entrepreneur, Pickard co-founded language learning startup MindSnacks in 2010 before pivoting to build Elevate in 2014, pioneering the consumer mental fitness category. He is also an Investing Partner at Volo Ventures.
John Lai
John Lai is a Taiwanese-Australian entrepreneur and the Founder & CEO of MixerBox, a Palo Alto-based AI super-apps company backed by Y Combinator. A former competitive programmer who won the Australian Championship and a silver medal at the ICPC world finals, Lai parlayed his University of New South Wales computer engineering degree (with First Class Honours and the University Medal) and a Harvard master's degree into building MixerBox in 2012. The company's portfolio of daily-essential mobile apps has surpassed 300 million downloads worldwide, and MixerBox became the largest developer in the ChatGPT Plugin Store by plugin count. Investors include Y Combinator, Adam D'Angelo (Facebook's first CTO, Quora CEO), and Paul Buchheit (Gmail creator).
Josh Coyne
Josh Coyne is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture capital firms, where he has backed category-defining companies including Figma, Rippling, Loom, UiPath, and Synthesia since joining in 2017. A summa cum laude Boston College graduate in Computer Science and Finance, Coyne cut his teeth at Qatalyst Partners advising on multi-billion dollar tech M&A before pivoting to backing founders himself. He focuses on enterprise software, applied AI, fintech, and data infrastructure - and co-hosts Kleiner Perkins' Grit podcast, where he probes founders on product-market fit and go-to-market strategy. Originally from Cleveland, fluent in French, and apparently devoted to Chick-fil-A.