SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Thiel Foundation today accepted 29 new members into the 2016 class of Thiel Fellows. The fellowship provides young people with $100,000 to learn by doing rather than by following conventional paths like college. This year’s cohort was selected from more than 6,000 applications received from around the world.
“We launched the fellowship in 2011 to test a simple thesis: college isn’t right for everyone—especially for young people who want to create new things,” said Blake Masters, President of the Thiel Foundation. “This has been proven true—by the successes of our past fellows, by the new applications we get every year, and by the growing numbers of young people who are creating their own career paths outside of college, with or without a fellowship from us.”
Thiel Fellows receive mentorship and guidance from current and former fellows, as well as from the Thiel Foundation’s network of technology entrepreneurs, investors, and scientists.
“In the past few years we’ve seen a dramatic change in the way young people approach their potential,” said Jack Abraham, Executive Director of the Thiel Fellowship. “Many are applying to the program with one or two companies already under their belts—they’ve become successful founders before they can even buy a beer. Our message may have seemed odd four or five years ago—some found it blasphemous to question how well American higher education was working, and to suggest entrepreneurship as an alternative path—but today even the colleges are waking up; top schools are creating their own incubators, crafting more flexible stop-out policies, and even raising venture capital funds. Young people now have more options than ever.”
To date, companies created by Thiel Fellows are together worth more than $1.4 billion.
Introducing the 2016 Thiel Fellows
Aditya Agarwalla (New Delhi, India)
Kisan Network
Agriculture
Marketplace
Aditya is co-founder of Kisan Network, an online
marketplace for the $200 billion Indian agricultural ecosystem. Kisan
enables farmers to sell their produce directly to institutional buyers
using a smartphone, rather than going through the physical marketplace
dominated by middlemen.
Alex Rodrigues (Calgary, Alberta / Mountain View, CA)
Varden
Labs
Autonomous Vehicles
Alex is CEO of Varden
Labs, a startup developing self-driving shuttles for private campuses.
Varden’s technology has been used to transport thousands of people, more
than any other autonomous vehicle company in the US.
Anthony Zhang (Calgary, Alberta, Canada / Mountain View, CA)
EnvoyNow
Local
Delivery
Anthony is CEO and co-founder of EnvoyNow, a last-mile
food delivery service focusing on colleges and universities. Through a
workforce of students who live on campus, EnvoyNow makes delivery
direct-to-dorm room, direct-to-lecture hall, and direct-to-study nook
faster and more accurate than mapping software-based delivery services
can achieve.
Boyan Slat (Delft, The Netherlands)
The Ocean Cleanup
Environmental
Technology
Boyan founded and runs The Ocean Cleanup, a
non-profit organization that develops technologies to rid the world’s
oceans of plastic. By leveraging the power of ocean currents to
concentrate and extract plastic waste, The Ocean Cleanup is orders of
magnitude more efficient than traditional approaches that rely on boats
and nets.
Brian Truong (Boston, MA)
HelloToken
Enterprise
Software
Brian is CEO and co-founder of HelloToken, a company
that enables digital publishers to earn up to 10x more for their content
by posing simple market research questions to readers instead of serving
ads. In turn, HelloToken has created an engine for real-time contextual
research across millions of people.
Christian Owens (London)
Paddle.com
Software
Christian
is the founder and CEO of Paddle.com, which builds infrastructure for
software companies to help companies deal with complex issues such as
payments, taxes, localization, and analytics.
Cosmo Scharf (Los Angeles, CA)
The Virtual Reality
Foundation and Visionary VR
Virtual Reality
Cosmo
co-founded The Virtual Reality Foundation, a non-profit organization
that produces the world’s largest event showcasing virtual reality
technology, VRLA Expo, as well as The Proto Awards, the premier
celebration for recognizing virtual reality content. He is also the
co-founder of Visionary VR, a venture-backed startup building software
for creating stories using virtual reality.
Eva Shang (Cambridge, MA)
Legalist
Legal
Analytics
Eva is co-founder of Legalist, a legal analytics and
alert platform that helps lawyers keep track of new developments in case
law so that they can represent their clients more effectively.
Grace Xiao & Raul Jordan (Cambridge, MA)
Kynplex
Communication
Software
Grace and Raul are co-founders of Kynplex, a startup
that provides communication tools for scientific laboratories. By
connecting the fragmented world of scientific research, Kynplex aims to
accelerate the pace of discovery.
Henry Hu (Hong Kong / San Francisco)
Cafe X
Food
Technology, Automation
A native of Beijing, Henry Hu is CEO and
co-founder of Cafe X, which designs, manufactures, and operates
automated robotic cafés that serve locally roasted coffee in 10 seconds.
Hunter Rosenblume & Rohith Varanasi (Detroit, MI)
Lunar
Labs
Telecommunications
Hunter and Rohith
co-founded Lunar Labs, a startup that sells smartphones with no monthly
contracts and pay-as-you-go data on a per-app basis starting at just
pennies per day. Lunar Labs aims to bring online the 64 million
Americans—and then billions more worldwide—that don’t yet own a
smartphone.
Ivonna Dumanyan (Kherson, Ukraine / Durham, NC)
BioMetrix
Wearable
Performance Technology; Artificial Intelligence
Ivonna is
co-founder and CEO of BioMetrix, a wearable platform for injury
prediction and prevention. BioMetrix is pushing the limits of connected
technology and insight-driven intelligence with a simple, skin-adhered
sensor. The system evaluates athlete movement to identify injury risk
factors and inform smarter training.
James Sun (Toronto, Canada)
Revlo
Social
Gaming
James is co-founder and CEO of Revlo, a fan engagement
platform for the game broadcaster Twitch. Revlo makes it easy for
broadcasters to interact with all their fans and monetize them.
Jesse Leimgruber (San Francisco)
NeoReach
Marketing
Technology
Jesse founded and runs NeoReach, a startup
developing influencer marketing technology for Fortune 1000 brands and
their agencies. NeoReach is currently used by industry giants such as
Wal-Mart, Amazon, and NBC.
Joey Krug (Knoxville, IL)
Augur
Prediction
Markets
Joey is building the world’s first decentralized
prediction market platform. Augur is built on the Ethereum blockchain
and allows users to forecast events and be rewarded for predicting them
correctly.
Joey Levy (New York)
Quizr
Sports
Gaming
Joey founded Draftpot, a daily fantasy sports platform,
from his dorm room in 2014. He is now working on Quizr, a sports betting
application that launches in Europe in late 2016.
Lexi Smith (Boston)
Carewell
Health IT
Lexi
is co-founder of Carewell, an intelligent caregiving platform that helps
caregivers take care of loved ones with dementia by using wearable
devices to learn the smartest ways to provide personalized care.
Luke Sophios (San Diego)
CourseKey
Education
Technology
Luke is founder and CEO of CourseKey, a software
company that allows teachers to leverage the devices that their students
are already bringing to class – laptops, tablets, and smartphones – to
instantly create a more interactive, engaging “smart classroom”.
Matt Arbesfeld (Cambridge, MA)
AppHub
Developer
Tools
Matt co-founded AppHub, a company that builds tools that
let app developers deploy and update software applications easily and
instantly. AppHub’s mission is to empower engineers by eliminating
tedious and redundant, time-consuming work.
Matthew Salsamendi & James Boehm (Seattle, WA)
Beam
Social
Gaming
Matt and James co-founded Beam, an interactive
live-streaming platform for gamers. Beam lets viewers of live-streamed
video game sessions get involved in the game, influencing gameplay in
real time.
Megan Grassell (Jackson Hole, WY)
Yellowberry
Apparel
Megan
founded Yellowberry in high school when she realized that tween girls
like her younger sister lacked age-appropriate options when buying their
first bras. Three years later, Yellowberry has pioneered a new approach
to this market, and has expanded beyond bras to underwear, loungewear,
and activewear.
Nick Mares (San Francisco)
Kettle & Fire
Food
Nick
co-founded Kettle & Fire with his brother to bring to market the world’s
first shelf-stable bone broth made from grass-fed, pasture-raised
cattle. Their wholesome, slow-simmered bone broth is available at select
Whole Foods, Sprouts Farmers Market locations, and several online
retailers.
Pamela Valdes Esteva (Mexico City, Mexico)
Beek
Social
Networking
Pamela is co-founder and CEO of Beek, a social
network for millennial book lovers. Beek casts aside sterile 5-star
rating systems and lets users discuss and react to books while they are
actually reading them.
Panashe Mahachi (Kitchener, Ontario, Canada / Mountain View, CA)
Lace
Labs
Government Technology
Panashe is
co-founder of Lace, a marketplace for cities and other municipalities to
find and purchase cutting-edge software. Local governments are
increasingly interested in innovation; the Lace platform helps municipal
staff to build smarter cities.
Samuel F. Poirier (Montreal)
Retinad
Virtual
Reality; Gaming
Samuel is co-founder and CEO of Retinad, the
preeminent analytics platform for virtual reality apps. Retinad helps
developers create better VR content with tools such as heat maps and
user emotional tracking so that consumers can enjoy a more immersive,
personalized virtual reality experience.
Sohail Prasad (Plano, TX / San Francisco)
Equidate
Financial
Technology
Sohail is the founder and co-CEO of Equidate, a
secondary marketplace for shares in private companies. To date, Equidate
has helped thousands of employees at private companies sell portions of
their stock to accredited investors in the absence of an IPO or
corporate sale.
ABOUT THE THIEL FOUNDATION
The Thiel Foundation supports science, technology, and long-term thinking about the future. For more information, see thielfoundation.org.
