Chris Messina
Education
Carnegie Mellon University
BFA, Communication Design 1999-08-01 - 2003-12-01
Y Combinator
Accelerator, Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies 2017-01-01 - 2018-01-01Work Experience
Ride Home Fund
Current
Ride Home Fund
Republic
2021-06-01 - 2022-12-01
Republic
Rally
2021-11-01 - 2022-05-01
Rally
ODF
2021-04-01 - 2021-06-01
ODF
Citizen Agency
2020-06-01 - 2021-06-01
Citizen Agency
ODF
2020-06-01 - 2020-06-01
ODF
Zyper (Acquired by Discord)
2019-09-01 - 2020-01-01
Zyper (Acquired by Discord)
Alter
2018-07-01 - 2018-08-01
Alter
Squad
2017-02-01 - 2018-04-01
Squad
Botness
2016-02-01 - 2017-12-01
Botness
Skills
Summary
Chris Messina has spent a decade working on social technologies, designing products and experiences, working with startups, and changing the world by giving away many of his creations, including the hashtag. His skillset is broad, anchored in product and user experience design. He has created movements online and off, and has acted as an effective agent of change in large and small organizations. In 2004, he helped organize the grassroots movement that propelled Mozilla Firefox to its first 100 million downloads. In 2005, he co-organized the first BarCamp and then popularized the unconference event model to over 350 cities around the world. In 2006, he opened the first dedicated coworking space in San Francisco, giving rise to a global movement. Then in 2007, he brought the idea for the hashtag to Twitter, changing social media forever and galvanizing social revolutions across the globe. During his time at Google as a Developer Advocate, he lead the creation of Google Developers as a brand and central hub for all of Google’s developer tools, services, and documentation. Later, as a UX designer on the Google+ team, he redesigned the Google Profile, unifying 46 discrete representations of a person across the company's various products. He also lead the efforts to design Google+’s publisher platform offerings, including the +1 button and other embeddable publisher widgets. He has spoken at conferences like SXSW, Web 2.0 Expo, Google I/O, and Microsoft's Future Decoded, and has frequently been quoted in media outlets like The New York Times, Business Week, LA Times, Washington Post, and Wired. He recently lead developer experience at Uber and co-founded Molly (YC W'18).
