Michael Seibel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Michael Seibel
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Seibel in 2019
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| Born | October 7, 1982 New York City, U.S.
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| Education | Yale University |
Michael Seibel (born October 7, 1982) is a business leader who helps new companies grow. He is a partner at Y Combinator, a famous company that supports startups. Michael also helped start two big companies: Justin.tv (which became Twitch) and Socialcam. He joined Y Combinator in 2013 and has helped many new businesses. He also works to encourage more different kinds of people to become startup founders.
Early Life and Starting Companies
Michael Seibel was born in Brooklyn, New York City, which he calls his favorite city. When he was a bit older, he moved to East Brunswick, New Jersey, and finished high school there in 2000.
He then went to Yale, where he studied political science. At Yale, he became good friends with Justin Kan. After graduating in 2005, Michael worked for a short time in politics.
Later, he moved to Silicon Valley, a famous area for tech companies. There, he helped start Justin.tv in 2007. This company let people broadcast their lives online. Michael was the CEO of Justin.tv until 2011.
After that, he became the CEO of Socialcam, an app for sharing videos. Socialcam started in March 2011 and was sold to another company, Autodesk, for $60 million in 2012.
In 2014, Justin.tv changed its name to Twitch Interactive. Later that year, Amazon bought Twitch for a huge amount of money, $970 million! Twitch is now a very popular platform for watching people play video games and other live streams.
Helping New Businesses Grow
Michael Seibel is known for helping other people start their own successful companies. In 2008, he was an important mentor to the people who started Airbnb. He even suggested they join Y Combinator.
In 2013, Michael became a part-time partner at Y Combinator. He then became the first African-American partner at Y Combinator in October 2014. In 2016, he became the CEO of the Y Combinator Startup Accelerator, which is like a special program that helps new companies get started.
After eight years in a leadership role, Michael announced on March 15, 2024, that he would return to his original role as a partner at Y Combinator. This means he will continue to advise and support new startups.
Michael has also personally invested his own money in many promising new companies. Some of these include Cruise, Brex, Figma, Rippling, Reddit, Clipboard Health, and Promise.
On June 10, 2020, Michael Seibel was chosen to join the board of directors for Reddit. He took the place of Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit, who stepped down. Alexis Ohanian had asked that his spot be filled by a Black candidate to help make the company more diverse. Reddit later announced that Michael was the "first black board member in the company's history."
On December 15, 2020, Michael was also named to the board of directors for Dropbox, another big tech company that provides online storage.
See also
- Emmett Shear
- Kyle Vogt
- Justin Kan
