Immad Akhund
Encyclopedia
Immad Akhund is a British entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

  who is best known as the CEO and co-founder of social gaming company, Heyzap
Heyzap
Heyzap is a social discovery platform for mobile and online games and the largest social network for mobile gamers. Heyzap is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2009 by Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund. Heyzap provides users with a way to check-in to their favorite games, discover games and join...

. Akhund grew up in Harrow, London
Harrow, London
Harrow is an area in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, United Kingdom. It is a suburban area and is situated 12.2 miles northwest of Charing Cross...

 and attended Nower Hill High School
Nower Hill High School
Nower Hill High School is a state Secondary School with a Sixth Form, in Pinner in the London Borough of Harrow. The school has specialist status as an Arts College...

, Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...

 and Dr Challoner's Grammar School
Dr Challoner's Grammar School
Dr Challoner's Grammar School, often abbreviated to DCGS, is an Academy Grammar School of approximately 1,300 boys located in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England....

 in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. He then graduated from Clare College
Clare College, Cambridge
Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1326, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. Clare is famous for its chapel choir and for its gardens on "the Backs"...

 University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 with a Bachelors in Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 

After graduating Akhund worked for Bloomberg L.P as a Software Engineer
Software engineer
A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...

 in 2006. The employment lasted 13 month with Akhund leaving to start his first company, Revmap at the age of twenty two. At the time Revmap was described as, a Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...

 for events and places.

Akhund moved to San Francisco to take part in the summer 2007 Y Combinator
Y Combinator
Y Combinator is an American seed-stage startup funding firm, started in March 2005. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two 3-month programs per year...

 round as the CTO and co-founder of a new company called Clickpass. Clickpass was a provider of OpenID and partnered with Plaxo
Plaxo
Plaxo is an online address book and social networking service originally founded by Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring...

, Scribd
Scribd
Scribd is a Web 2.0 based document-sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. Scribd was founded by Trip Adler, Tikhon Bernstam, and Jared Friedman in 2006...

, Disqus and a host of other websites. In 2008 Clickpass was acquired by Yola for an undisclosed sum.

Following the acquisition of Clickpass, Immad Akhund, along with childhood friend Jude Gomila
Jude Gomila
Jude Gomila is a British entrepreneur and one of the co-founders of the website Heyzap. Gomila grew up in Harrow, London and attended Nower Hill High School, Middlesex and Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham, Buckinghamshire...

, founded social gaming website Heyzap
Heyzap
Heyzap is a social discovery platform for mobile and online games and the largest social network for mobile gamers. Heyzap is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2009 by Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund. Heyzap provides users with a way to check-in to their favorite games, discover games and join...

  Heyzap quickly gained traction and raised money from Y Combinator
Y Combinator
Y Combinator is an American seed-stage startup funding firm, started in March 2005. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two 3-month programs per year...

  and Union Square Ventures.

Akhund blogs about business, is an advisor for Seedcamp  and speaks at events on social and mobile gaming. Akhund Spoke in 2010 at DiscoveryBeat, Digital Hollywood and Social Developers Summit and is often cited for his expert opinion.

External links

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