Google VC, Tumblr CEO Among the Top Innovators Under 35

MIT’s Technology Review magazine has released its annual list of the top young innovators under 35, a group that includes academics, startup founders and entrepreneurs of all kinds from a number of different fields, including medicine, computing, communications and nanotechnology. The magazine, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has put together the list every year for the last decade. Here are a few of the prominent names on the list:

  • Wesley Chan (32) of Google: Chan was responsible for building two new businesses for the web company: Google Analytics and Google Voice (which was built on the acquisition of GrandCentral). Chan is now a partner with Google’s venture arm.
  • Danah Boyd (32) of Microsoft: Boyd is a sociologist who specializes in studying how youth use the web and social media, and now works for Microsoft’s research arm. She’s studied how race affects our use of social networks, and has advised companies such as Google and LiveJournal on how to incorporate social tools into their businesses.
  • David Karp (24) of Tumblr: Tumblr launched what the company says is an easier blogging tool in 2007, and within two weeks had 75,000 registered users. It’s now adding 10 times that many every month, and has taken about $ 10 million in venture funding.
  • Avi Muchnick (31) of Aviary: Aviary is free, web-based software for creating and editing both images and sounds. Muchnick’s company has raised $ 11 million in venture capital and angel funding from investors, such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
  • David Kobia (32) of Ushahidi: A Kenyan expatriate who was working in Alabama when Kenya was overcome by riots and unrest following elections there, Kobia used his programming skills to help put together what became Ushahidi, an emergency service that pulls together information from Twitter, SMS messages and other information services during a crisis.
  • Gabriel Charlet (34) of Alcatel-Lucent: A telecommunications scientist, Charlet smashed the world record for high-speed, long-distance communications over a fiber-optic cable in 2009, producing a transmission rate of 7.2 terabits per second over a single fiber more than 7,000 kilometers long.

The best quote in the profiles we’ve seen so far comes from Tumblr founder David Karp. When asked what he would do if his various strategies for growing the blogging network don’t pan out, he said, “I can always move back in with my parents.”


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