Darian Shirazi

Darian Alexander Shirazi (born December 23, 1986 in Palo Alto, California, U.S.) is an Internet entrepreneur who first became known for his involvement with the popular social-networking site Facebook [cite web |url=http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/facebooks-worst-enemy |title=Facebook's worst enemy? |publisher=San Francisco Magazine |date=2007-11-01 |accessdate=2008-03-11] and now for his founding of people discovery network, Redux.

History

Shirazi was born in Palo Alto, California to an Iranian father and an Iranian-American mother in Stanford University's Medical Hospital. It was before Darian's birth when his family first was involved with the growth of the technology industry in Silicon Valley. Darian's father, Sharam Shirazi graduated from Stanford's Graduate School of Business where he became friends with Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla, the founders of Sun Microsystems. After business school, Sharam worked for Bain & Company with eBay's former CEO Meg Whitman and Intuit's founder, Scott Cook [cite web |url=http://blog.fotoflexer.com/2007/10/22/welcome-to-a-new-team-member-at-fotoflexer/ |title=Welcome to a new Team Member at Fotoflexer |publisher=Fotoflexer Blog |date=2007-10-22 |accessdate=2008-03-11] . During this time, Sharam influenced Darian to explore the internet and at the age of 14, Darian began building internet web sites for his friends and family.

Early life

At 15, Darian joined eBay as an intern testing the third revision of eBay's Sell Your Item feature. In addition, Darian contributed to the Recently Viewed Items feature and the redesign of the site's navigation headers.

After working for two summers at eBay, Darian met Internet entrepreneur Sean Parker who at the time was working for a small startup called Facebook. Sean introduced Darian to Mark Zuckerberg who offered a job to Darian [http://books.google.com/books?id=ocxve73dUHsC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=darian+shirazi&source=web&ots=f1L12I_U-m&sig=24OAbvKCRSIjjysEIuOMJNaZ-Tc&hl=en] . At Facebook, Darian worked on the August 2005 redesign of the site, high school registration, and News Feed [cite web |url=http://entrepreneurship.berkeley.edu/jan08.asp |title=Berkeley Entrepreneurship Forum |publisher=Berkeley Entrepreneurship Forum |date=2008-01-01 |accessdate=2008-03-11] .

While at Facebook, Darian attended the University of California, Berkeley and studied in the field of Philosophy.

After Facebook

After working for nearly two years at Facebook, Darian started a mobile photo sharing site with three of his college friends -- David McIntosh, Daniel Kluesing, and Alan Rutledge. The site, Fotodunk [cite web |url=http://mashable.com/?p=802 |title=FotoDUNK -- Put Cellphone Photos and Slideshows on your MySpace |publisher=Mashable |date=2006-08-02 |accessdate=2008-03-11] , garnered high usage on MySpace because of its unique proposition to upload photos directly from people's mobile devices to their MySpace profiles. Comedian Dane Cook is known to have been a user of Fotodunk until the service was shut down after being acquired by iLike in November 2006 [cite web |url=http://venturebeat.com/2006/11/09/ilike-making-the-right-moves-on-music-video-and-now-mobile-media-buys-fotodunk/2 |title=iLike makes move on Music, Video, and now Mobile Media: Buys Fotodunk |publisher=VentureBeat |date=2006-11-09 |accessdate=2008-03-11] .

McIntosh and Shirazi worked at iLike for 6 months on the music social network's iCast product which has since been introduced on its popular Facebook application.

In December 2006, Shirazi decided to start a new company which he intended to lead with his college debate partner, David McIntosh. At Berkeley, they studied under the direction of Jonathan Burgstone, founder of SupplierMarket (acquired by Ariba for $1.1B) and Adjunct Professor, who inspired them to pursue their entrepreneurial plans. It is said that Shirazi and Burgstone struck a deal that if Shirazi could deliver a term sheet for their idea by the end of the semester, Shirazi would receive an A+ in the class automatically.

At the age of 19 and before the end of the semester, Shirazi and McIntosh raised $1.65M from Alsop Louie Partners and former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel [cite web |url=http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/10/1022_25and_under/source/8.htm |title=2007 Finalists: Best Young Entrepreneurs |publisher=BusinessWeek |date=2007-05-09 |accessdate=2008-03-11] .

Redux

Shirazi theorized that people would tire of social networks because they only managed your current friend connections [cite web |url=http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/28/redux-discovers-friends-so-you-dont-have-to/ |title=Redux Discover's Friends so you don't have to |publisher=Techcrunch |date=2008-01-28 |accessdate=2008-03-11] . At the DEMO conference, he unveiled Redux's product to the world showing how, technologically, people could be linked to each other [cite web |url=http://www.demo.com/demonstrators/demo2008/124727.html |title=Redux, Inc. |publisher=DEMO |date=2008-01-28 |accessdate=2008-03-11] . Redux rejects the philosophy that meeting people online only works for dating purposes. The site is fundamentally designed to bring people together and introduce them to people they'd be interested in building a connection with [cite web |url=http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/29/reduxs-people-discovery-service-wants-you-to-make-new-friends/ |title=Redux Wants You To Make New Friends |publisher=VentureBeat |date=2008-01-28 |accessdate=2008-03-11] . So far, the site has been well received but has yet to launch publicly. Details on the site are still scant. Redux is slated for release in the second quarter of 2008. Shirazi served as Redux's Chairman & Chief Executive Officer [cite web |url=http://www.mercextra.com/blogs/takahashi/2008/01/28/demo-reception-the-youngest-of-the-turks/ |title=Youngest of the Turks |publisher=San Jose Mercury News |date=2008-01-28 |accessdate=2008-03-11] until March 2008, when he gave the CEO position to David McIntosh. He still retains the Chairman title.

External links

* [http://www.linkedin.com/in/darian314 Darian Shirazi's LinkedIn Profile]
* [http://www.crunchbase.com/person/darian-shirazi Darian Shirazi's CrunchBase Profile]

References