Tagged: consumer-internet
20 results
MixerBox
MixerBox is a Palo Alto-based super-apps company building a constellation of daily-essential mobile apps - from OnePlayer and FreecableTV to AlarmTunes, NewsDash and a suite of AI tools that became the largest single developer on the ChatGPT Plugin Store. Founded in 2012 by Taiwanese-Australian Harvard alum John Lai and backed by Y Combinator, the company has crossed 300 million downloads worldwide.
eBay
eBay is one of the original internet marketplaces, a global platform where roughly 136 million buyers shop across hundreds of millions of listings in about 190 markets. Born in 1995 as a hobby site called AuctionWeb, it pioneered the idea that strangers could trust strangers enough to trade online. Three decades later it has reinvented itself around enthusiast categories, certified collectibles, and recommerce - selling the new, the rare, and the gloriously second-hand.
Airbnb
Airbnb is a global travel marketplace that lets hosts rent out homes, rooms, and experiences to guests in more than 220 countries and regions. Born in 2008 from three air mattresses on a San Francisco apartment floor, it turned spare space into a category-defining business, went public in 2020 at roughly a $100 billion valuation, and in 2025 expanded beyond stays into Services and a redesigned Experiences product - positioning itself as an everything app for travel.
Coffee Meets Bagel
Coffee Meets Bagel is a relationship-focused dating app founded by Korean-American sisters Arum, Dawoon, and Soo Kang. Built on the idea that quality beats quantity, it serves curated daily matches rather than infinite swipes - aimed at people who want commitment, not entertainment.
Curated
Curated is a San Francisco-based online marketplace that connects shoppers with vetted, passionate experts who deliver one-on-one product advice for high-consideration purchases - from skis and golf clubs to cameras and coffee gear. Founded in 2017 by Eduardo Vivas, Peter Ombres, Alex Vauthey and Annabel Liu, the company raised about $141.5M from CapitalG, Greylock and Forerunner Ventures before being acquired by Flip for $330M in stock in July 2024.
Jay Sullivan
Jay Sullivan is the CEO of Fandom, the world's largest fan platform with 350 million monthly visitors spanning wikis, gaming, movies, TV, and pop culture. A Yale-trained applied mathematician turned product visionary, Sullivan built his career shepherding the open web at Mozilla—where he served as SVP of Product, COO, and Interim CEO—before stints driving product at Groupon, Facebook's Reality Labs AI team, and Twitter's consumer and revenue products. Co-inventor of three US patents and co-founder of PhoneSpots (acquired 2007), he has spent two decades building platforms at mass scale. Since joining Fandom in February 2026, he is steering the company from a Google-traffic-dependent reference destination toward a real-time, AI-powered fan engagement platform.
Natalie Gordon
Natalie Gordon is the CEO and Founder of Babylist, the universal baby registry and family commerce platform she coded during her son's nap time in 2011. A University of Waterloo computer science graduate and Amazon Fresh alum, she turned a personal frustration with big-box registries into a profitable, $750M+ annual revenue business serving millions of families. She has expanded Babylist beyond registries into first-party ecommerce, editorial content, and a health vertical covering insurance-reimbursed breast pumps—including Medicaid recipients. In 2025, she launched the 'End the Baby Tax' campaign, uniting 30 baby brands against tariffs in a full-page Washington Post ad and a Times Square billboard. Named a 2026 CNBC Changemaker, she is one of the most trusted voices in the parenting and family retail space.
Zumper
Zumper is North America's largest privately held rental marketplace, making it as easy to rent a home as it is to book a hotel. The company aggregates millions of long-term, short-term and monthly listings across the U.S. and Canada, layering instant tours, digital applications and tenant screening on top.
Tanner Johnson
Tanner Johnson is the Co-Founder and Former President of Curated, a San Francisco-based expert marketplace that matches shoppers with passionate product specialists for high-consideration purchases like outdoor gear, skiing equipment, golf clubs, and jewelry. A Princeton-educated psychology and neuroscience graduate with roots in outdoor education, Johnson helped build Curated from a 2017 founding concept into a $141.5M-funded platform with over 250 employees - until its $330 million stock acquisition by social commerce company Flip in July 2024.
Bob Kupbens
Bob Kupbens is the Chief Executive Officer of StubHub International, the world's largest ticket marketplace, a role he assumed in January 2024. A seasoned digital commerce executive with an MIT engineering pedigree and Michigan MBA, Kupbens has spent three decades reshaping how consumers interact with major brands - from launching the Fly Delta mobile app at Delta Air Lines to running Apple's global online retail operation to orchestrating the ADT-Google partnership. Now based in Madrid while living in Millbrae, California, he is focused on deploying AI-driven customer experience improvements and defending StubHub International's position in key markets like the UK.
Elizabeth Douglas
Elizabeth Douglas is the CEO of wikiHow, the world's leading how-to platform visited by more than 150 million people monthly across 230 countries. A Stanford-trained computer scientist and Stanford MBA, she joined wikiHow in 2009 as COO and rose to CEO, overseeing more than 1,500% growth in traffic. Under her leadership, wikiHow has become a trusted, judgment-free resource with 100,000+ guides in English and 300,000+ across 18+ languages, earning a reputation as one of the nicest places on the internet.
Eugene Johnson
Eugene Johnson is the founder and CEO of Revi, an AI-powered restaurant POS and revenue growth platform headquartered in San Francisco. Growing up in one of New York City's roughest neighborhoods, Johnson started his first business at 18, built a career in enterprise sales at Cisco Meraki, and pivoted to found Revi — a platform now serving 1M+ consumers and processing nearly $100M in transactions. He is also an Amazon bestselling author of 'The Mental Playbook' and a competitive chess player who ranks in the 85-90th percentile globally.
Libby Roin
Libby Roin is the CEO of Goodreads, the world's largest social reading platform with over 150 million members. A Boston College English major turned MIT Sloan MBA, she spent nearly a decade building her way up through Goodreads product teams before taking the top job in January 2022. Along the way she founded Polk Street Press, a children's interactive app studio, and raised over $10 million for Teach for America. She grew up one of seven kids in Oklahoma - daughter of a police officer and a schoolteacher - and brings a pragmatic, community-first sensibility to one of the internet's most beloved book destinations.
Maxx Lobo
Maxx Lobo is the Chief Executive Officer of Ask Media Group, the IAC-owned digital media and performance marketing company behind Ask.com and other properties reaching 245 million people monthly. A two-decade veteran of ad-tech, cloud infrastructure, and digital media, Lobo rose through the ranks as CTO and COO/President before taking the top role in 2025. Under his operational leadership, Ask Media Group tripled its EBITDA from $50 million to over $100 million in four years, cementing his reputation as one of the more quietly effective operators in the digital media landscape.
Nathan Sharp
Nathan Sharp is the Co-Founder and CEO of Retro, a friends-only photo journal app built on the belief that social media can be better - more intimate, more honest, more for the people you actually care about. A Harvard grad and Dartmouth Tuck MBA, Sharp spent six years at Meta where he helped launch Instagram Stories in 2016 before leaving to build Retro with his co-founder Ryan Olson. Backed by Thrive Capital, Dylan Field, and a constellation of top-tier VCs, Retro hit #1 photo app in Canada and broke into the US top charts in 2025, proving that people still want a social app that actually feels like talking to friends.
Tarun Gaur
Tarun Gaur is the Founder and CEO of qikfox Cybersecurity Systems, a San Mateo-based startup building what it calls the world's first browser with integrated decentralized identity and quantum-resistant cryptography. With 24+ years spanning Microsoft, Deloitte, and HP - and one successful exit (Tringapps, 500 employees, acquired 2018) - Gaur launched qikfox in 2019 after his mother was scammed online. Backed by Tim Draper with $1.1M in seed funding, qikfox charges $180/year for an invite-only premium browser targeting everyday consumers who want safety, security, and privacy baked into the foundation - not bolted on as an afterthought.
Alfred Lin
Alfred Lin is the Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital, one of venture capital's most storied firms, where he co-steers a $7 billion AI-focused expansion fund alongside Pat Grady. A Taiwanese immigrant who resold Tony Hsieh's pizza by the slice at Harvard, Lin went on to be CFO, COO, and Chairman of Zappos - guiding it to its first profitable year and a $1.2 billion Amazon acquisition - before joining Sequoia in 2010. His portfolio reads like a decade of defining bets: Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Instacart, Reddit, and OpenAI. A three-time Forbes Midas List #1, he is the rare investor who has lived the operator's grind and brings that lens to every founder he backs.
Kevin Efrusy
Kevin Efrusy is a Stanford-trained engineer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-venture-capitalist best known for personally sourcing Accel's $12.2M Series A investment in Facebook in 2005 - widely cited as one of the most profitable VC bets in history. A former co-founder of Corio (SaaS pioneer, IPO'd, acquired by IBM) and first CEO of IronPlanet, Efrusy joined Accel in 2003 and ranked #6 on the Forbes Midas List in 2011. He pioneered Accel's Latin America investment thesis after a year-long family sabbatical across South Africa, Brazil, and Japan in 2012, and has since backed unicorns including QuintoAndar ($5.1B), Gympass ($2.2B), and Nuvemshop ($3.1B). He transitioned to Emeritus Partner at Accel in 2019 and continues as an active angel investor and philanthropist through the Efrusy Family Foundation.
Matt Cohler
Matt Cohler is one of Silicon Valley's most accomplished yet deliberately low-profile venture capitalists. A Yale music graduate turned McKinsey consultant, he joined LinkedIn as a founding member, became Facebook employee #5 and VP of Product under Zuckerberg, then joined Benchmark Capital in 2008 as its youngest-ever General Partner. His investment portfolio - including Instagram, Tinder, Dropbox, Asana, and Zendesk - places him among the most successful consumer internet investors of his era. Since stepping back from active fund management in 2018, he serves on the boards of KKR, the Yale Investments Office, and the Environmental Defense Fund, and sustains a lifelong devotion to classical music through 17+ years on the San Francisco Symphony board and patronage of the Berlin Philharmonic.
George Zachary
George Zachary is a General Partner at CRV (Charles River Ventures) and one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture capitalists, known for seed-stage bets on Twitter, Yammer, and PillPack. A Greek-American MIT graduate who once helped build the Nintendo 64 at Silicon Graphics, he pivoted from consumer internet to bioengineering after a near-miss cancer scare in 2015 - writing more diligence on his first biotech deal than in the prior decade combined. He deploys capital guided by a single question: does this founder need - not just want - to build something big?