User:Vipul/Chamath Palihapitiya

Chamath Palihapitiya is a venture capitalist in the United States.

Early life
Palihapitiya was born in Sri Lanka. He moved with his family to Canada at the age of six. He later moved to California in 2000, just after the peak of the Internet boom.

Career as a software engineer
Palihapitiya joined AOL and rose through the ranks to become the head of AOL's instant messaging division in 2004. He then left AOL and joined Mayfield Fund in 2005. However, he left the job after a few months and joined Facebook, which at the time was a little more than a year old. Palihapitiya's work at Facebook involved trying to increase Facebook's userbase.

Palihapitiya claims to have joined Facebook with a "chip on my shoulder" and a contempt of people who merely write code, but his experience at Facebook led him to revise his beliefs. One of the things Palihapitiya admired about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's principal founder and CEO, was Zuckerberg's lack of ego and his ability to avoid letting personal egos get in the way of business decisions.

Career as a venture capitalist
Palihapitiya started off making investments on the side while still employed at Facebook, including investments in Playdom (bought by The Walt Disney Company) and Bumptop (bought by Google). In 2011, he had enough money to quit his job at Facebook and start his own fund called The Social+Capital Partnership. The fund was praised by Peter Thiel, who invested in it and expressed enthusiasm for Palihapitiya's approach.

Palihapitiya has invested (through the fund) in a number of companies since then, including Yammer and SecondMarket.

In March 2013, Palihapitiya confirmed that his venture fund had raised over $275 million in its second round of fundraising.

Airbnb controversy
In early October 2011, an email allegedly written by Chamath Palihapitiya to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, that was critical of the manner in which Airbnb was structuring its funding ring, was leaked to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. A follow-up revealed that new aspects of the deal were in development that might alleviate some of the concerns expressed by Palihapitiya, and he was reconsidering his decision not to invest in the funding round. He also expressed regret about the email being leaked, and he said that he was not responsible for the leak.

Politics
Palihapitiya was listed as one of the "Founders" of the lobbying group FWD.us. The group launched on April 11, 2013, and its goals include immigration reform, improving education, and enabling technological innovation, all in a United States context.