# Thierry Schellenbach

> Thierry Schellenbach is the Dutch-born, Boulder-based co-founder and CEO of Stream, a developer platform for chat, video and activity feeds. He learned the underlying scaling problem while building Fashiolista, then turned that hard-won infrastructure knowledge into a company with co-founder Tommaso Barbugli. A self-taught programmer who launched a profitable site at 14, Schellenbach combines an engineer's appetite for difficult systems with an operator's attention to distribution, fundraising and product focus.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Stream
- **Organizations:** Stream, Fashiolista, Techstars NYC, Forbes Technology Council
- **Nationality:** Dutch
- **Education:** BSc in International Business Administration, cum laude; ERIM Honours and Erasmus Honours, Erasmus University Rotterdam
- **Known for:** Co-founded Fashiolista and helped scale the fashion social network to millions of users before its acquisition., Co-founded Stream and grew it from an activity-feed API into a platform spanning chat, video, feeds, moderation and AI agent tooling., Authored or contributed to widely used open-source projects including Stream Framework, Django Facebook and Winds.

## Career timeline

- **c. 2000** — At age 14, launched a profitable website and taught himself programming.
- **2005-2008** — Studied International Business Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam, graduating cum laude.
- **2010** — Co-founded Fashiolista, a fashion social network that grew to millions of users.
- **2012-2014** — Developed and shared open-source feed technology, including Stream Framework, after confronting Fashiolista's scaling problems.
- **2014** — Co-founded Stream with Tommaso Barbugli in Amsterdam.
- **2015** — Joined Techstars NYC; Stream later established its headquarters in Boulder while retaining an Amsterdam engineering base.
- **2019** — Stream launched its chat product, expanding beyond its original activity-feed API.
- **2020** — Stream raised a $15 million Series A after rapid growth in its chat API business.
- **2021** — Stream raised a $38 million Series B led by Felicis Ventures, bringing disclosed financing at the time to $53 million; Schellenbach was also an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year finalist.
- **2024** — Stream announced Activity Feeds v3 in alpha, adding modern ranking and personalization capabilities.
- **2025** — Stream launched Vision Agents, an open-source SDK for real-time voice and vision agents.
- **2026** — Schellenbach reported record new-customer growth for 2025 and continued work across livestreaming, Feeds v3, moderation and vision agents.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Fashiolista and helped scale the fashion social network to millions of users before its acquisition.
- Co-founded Stream and grew it from an activity-feed API into a platform spanning chat, video, feeds, moderation and AI agent tooling.
- Authored or contributed to widely used open-source projects including Stream Framework, Django Facebook and Winds.
- Raised a $38 million Series B for Stream in 2021, six months after its $15 million Series A.
- Named a 2021 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year finalist and a 2022 ColoradoBiz Top Entrepreneur finalist.
- Built products that Stream says support billions of end-user experiences across thousands of apps.

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Stream was again listed among Built In Colorado's best midsize places to work.
- **2026-01** — In a year-end update, Schellenbach said Stream recorded its best new-customer growth in 2025 and highlighted work on large livestreams, Feeds v3, moderation, chat and vision agents.
- **2025-10** — Stream launched Vision Agents, an open-source SDK for building real-time voice and vision agents.
- **2024-09** — Stream announced the alpha release of Activity Feeds v3, with support for ranking, personalization and modern social-feed patterns.

## Links

- Website: https://getstream.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thierryschellenbach
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/tschellenbach
- GitHub: https://github.com/tschellenbach
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2tro9RlO8M
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/getstream.io/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/thierry-schellenbach
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-27