Chamath Palihapitiya

Chamath Palihapitiya
Palihapitiya in 2016
Born	(1976-09-03) September 3, 1976 (age 40) Sri Lanka
Alma mater	University of Waterloo
Known for	Software development, venture capital

Chamath Palihapitiya is a venture capitalist. Palihapitiya was born in Sri Lanka, raised in Canada, and has worked for much of his life in Silicon Valley. Palihaptiya is an owner and board member of the Golden State Warriors.

Palihapitiya was born in Sri Lanka, and moved with his family to Canada at the age of six. After graduating, in 1999, from the University of Waterloo with a degree in electrical engineering, he worked for a year as a derivatives trader at the investment bank BMO Nesbitt Burns. In 2000, Palihapitiya moved to California with his girlfriend.

Palihapitiya joined AOL and rose through the ranks to become the head of AOL's instant messaging division in 2004. In 2005, he left AOL and joined Mayfield Fund. 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 contempt for 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 ego get in the way of business decisions.

Palihapitiya started off making investments on the side while still employed at Facebook, including investments in Palantir, Pure Storage (NYSE:PSTG), Playdom (bought by The Walt Disney Company), and Bumptop (bought by Google).