# Trevor Blackwell

> Trevor Blackwell is a Canadian-American computer scientist, roboticist and founder whose career runs from Viaweb and Yahoo Store to Anybots, Y Combinator and the visual robot-programming project Visibot. His machines have included a self-balancing electric unicycle, the dynamically balancing biped Dexter and the QB telepresence robot.

- **Role:** Founder at Umbrella Research; creator of Visibot
- **Organizations:** Umbrella Research, Visibot, Y Combinator, Anybots, Viaweb, Yahoo
- **From:** Saskatoon, Canada
- **Nationality:** Canadian-American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Engineering, Carleton University, PhD in Computer Science, Harvard University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Viaweb, whose web-based e-commerce software became Yahoo Store after its 1998 acquisition., Co-founded Y Combinator in 2005., Founded the robotics research company behind Anybots and its QB telepresence robot.

## Career timeline

- **1993-1998** — Studied computer science at Harvard, researching randomized network protocols, randomized compiler optimizations and system performance measurement.
- **1995-2001** — Co-founded Viaweb and developed its merchant order-processing and statistics systems; the product became Yahoo Store after Yahoo acquired the company in 1998.
- **1998-2001** — Worked at Yahoo after the Viaweb acquisition.
- **2001** — Founded Umbrella Research and began the robotics work that produced Anybots, Monty and Dexter.
- **2005** — Co-founded Y Combinator with Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris.
- **2006** — Presented his self-balancing vehicles and humanoid robotics work at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference.
- **2007** — Dexter achieved dynamically balanced biped walking after nearly six years of development.
- **2009-2011** — Anybots developed and commercialized QA and QB telepresence robots, with QB shipping to customers in 2011.
- **2020** — Ended his partner role at Y Combinator.
- **Current** — Works on Visibot, described on his personal site as an effort to find better ways to program robots.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Viaweb, whose web-based e-commerce software became Yahoo Store after its 1998 acquisition.
- Co-founded Y Combinator in 2005.
- Founded the robotics research company behind Anybots and its QB telepresence robot.
- Built the Eunicycle, a self-balancing electric unicycle, and published its design.
- Led the small team that developed Dexter, described at the time as the first dynamically balancing biped robot.
- Published systems research in ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE INFOCOM and USENIX proceedings.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — His personal site identifies his current focus as finding better ways to program robots at Visibot.
- **2023-02** — Publicly marked becoming a United States citizen.
- **2022-08** — Created the public Plage project on GitLab as part of his continuing software work.

## Links

- Website: https://www.trevorblackwell.com/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/tlbtlbtlb
- GitHub: https://github.com/tlbtlbtlb

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/trevor-blackwell
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-26