I was born and raised in the beautiful Bourgas, Bulgaria, a city located on the Black Sea coast. My fascination with technology started at a very young age. I started programming when I was 9 years old and won my first national informatics competition that same year. Soon, I became proficient in a number of languages including C/C++, Pascal, and Assembly and specialized in reverse engineering, data structures, and complex algorithms. Since I am very competitive by nature, I truly enjoyed going to numerous national programming competitions, even winning a few while still in high school. During the same period, I was very fortunate to meet Iliya Yordanov, a very skilled programmer and a good friend, and in 2001 while still at high school the two of us cofounded an Internet company called cpp-home.com that served as a learning hub for beginner C++ programmers. After growing significantly, cpp-home was acquired 2 years later. I learned a tremendous amount about entrepreneurship from that experience and owe a lot to Iliya.
Throughout high school, I was not only working on startups but was also heavily involved in my local community, cofounding the first Interact club in my district (part of the Rotary International family). After a short stint at a local campaign for mayor, where I headed first-time voter relations, I was inspired to pursue a more rounded education and in 2004 started my Bachelor of Arts in Integrated Social Sciences (political science, sociology, mass communication, and economics) at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. During my undergrad, I continued being active in the local community, serving as the President of the student body and cofounding and leading a Rotaract club (again part of the Rotary International family) until my graduation in 2007.
As a next step, I knew I wanted to build even stronger and better new ventures and so I applied and got accepted to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where I pursued an MBA as part of the Class of 2009. I had an incredibly rich experience at the GSB: I got to know myself much better and made many amazing friends. I also learned a great deal about leadership, entrepreneurship, and management from faculty, classmates, and alumni.
Since I was dedicated to building startups, just three months into the degree, I teamed up with Anton Babadjanov, Petar Dobrev, and Nikolay Kazmin - three dear friends and very talented hackers - to create team 2x. Team 2x built and tested a number of consumer facing products using the "lean startup" methodology and was an amazing learning experience for all four of us. We still hack together product prototypes on a regular basis.
During my MBA, I was also fortunate to meet my classmates Howard Bornstein, Erik Bengtsson, and Chris Herndon with whom I cofounded my current startup, Philanthropedia. Philanthropedia is a social venture disrupting the $250B philanthropy sector by tackling one of its most fundamental issues: how to evaluate nonprofits. Philanthropedia is a perfect example of the type of venture I want to build: tackling a core problem in a big industry in order to have massive impact. What makes this startup experience even better is the fact that I am working with terrific teammates and have a great funder, the Hewlett Foundation. In March 2011, Philanthropedia was acquired by GuideStar, the largest provider of nonprofit data. I am currently helping integrate the two companies as well as creating GuideStar Labs, a startup incubator within GuideStar.
In my spare time, I write about startup management and structured innovation in the Startup Lore. I also enjoy advising young entrepreneurs and helping them make their startups a success. I am very interested in leadership, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, technology, science, philosophy, and the world at large. I occasionally speak on these topics to students of all ages - most recently at Stanford (at the undergraduate, law, and business schools), Menlo College, Harker School, and UC Berkeley. I regularly tweet and sometimes write on these topics as well. I am a former professional gamer (StarCraft, Counter-Strike) and still follow the eSports scene for fun.
Thank you for visiting my website. I hope you enjoy your stay!
