6 Asian American Entrepreneurs You Should Know About

Written by Jenny Chan @jennychanart, Hani Sharabash @h_bash, and Cheng Yu @chengyutv

Looking for a role model? These alumni might just inspire you to start something! Xiao Ma, Sizhao Yang, Bill Tai, Steve Chen, and Ping Fu are all great role models in the community. Here are short biographies about each person to get you started, as well as Twitter links so you can follow them.

Xiao Ma

As the first engineer who joined Pattern Insight, he bravely took a leave from his PhD and worked as a founding member at Pattern Insight to develop several products that changed the industry including Code Insight. Code Insight is a software analysis tool that helps developers to locate issues in source code. He is now Director of Engineering at Pattern Insight. He can be tweeted @xiaoma

Sizhao Yang

One of the most underrated entrepreneurs from University of Illinois. The technology that Sizhao built in 2006 is the backbone of Zynga, a company now worth 2.3Bn, and powers games like Farmville, with over 200 million users as of today. Sizhao is currently working on a stealth mobile project. You can tweet Sizhao at @zaoyang.

Bill Tai

A partner at Charles River Ventures, has an unusually strong track record of startup investment. Out of 32 deals, about 50% have IPOed, while another 25% were acquired. For over 20 years, he has been deeply involved in his two main passions: kiteboarding and venture capital His down-to-earth, pragmatic, and long-term approach to investment have contributed greatly to his success. You can tweet Bill at @kitevc.

Steve Chen

Steve Chen is one of the best known entrepreneurs to come out of UIUC. Steve Chen was an early employee of Paypal, along with other UIUC alums. Steve would later become a co-founder of Youtube. After his success, it is clear he wants other enterprising Asian-Americans to follow in his footsteps. With an abundant mindset as an immigrant, he has recently financially backed Fwd.US, an immigration reform initiative spearheaded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. You can tweet Steve at @stevechen

Ping Fu

Using her experience from working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, she founded Geomagic, a software development company focused on 3D software and technology for design and engineering. She is a survivor of not only exile, gang rape, and separation from her parents, she strived to thrive in America as a successful entrepreneur. As an Asian American woman, she decided to allow herself grow infinitely as an entrepreneur and created Geomagic. She is willing to share her success and serve on the board of President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. One can learn more about her from her biography, Bend Not Break. You can tweet her @pfugeomagic