Chris Messina
  • @chrismessina
  • Inventor of the hashtag. #1 Product Hunter.
  • Oakland
  • he/him
Chris Messina is best known for inventing the hashtag back in 2007 but he's been living on — and defining — the future of social media and social technology ever since. He's served on both developer platform and product design teams at Google and Uber, consulted with startups, and co-founded YC-backed conversational social AI company.

Prior to the pandemic, he spent a year as a digital nomad travelling & speaking all around the world but recently refocused to help makers and founders find their audience through Product Hunt, and consequently became the top hunter in terms of volume and frequency with which people seek out his counsel.

Throughout his career, he has created movements online & off and catalyzed change in large and small organizations starting in 2004, when he helped organize the grassroots movement that propelled Mozilla Firefox to its first 100M downloads. In 2005, he co-organized the first BarCamp and then popularized the unconference event model, which spread to over 350 cities worldwide. In 2006, he opened the first coworking spaces in the world, giving rise to a global movement.
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Resume

Jun 2021 - Present

Head of West Coast Business Development, Republic