Mahbod Moghadam

Mahbod Moghadam (born ) is an American internet entrepreneur. In 2009 he, Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory co-founded Rap Genius (now Genius), a website on which users can submit annotations and interpretations of song lyrics and other content. In 2015 he, Sam Kazemian and Theodor Forselius co-founded Everipedia, a wiki-based online encyclopedia, where he worked as the Chief Community Officer for several years. After leaving Everipedia, he became an entrepreneur-in-residence at the venture capital firm Mucker Capital, then worked on HellaDoge, a cryptocurrency-based social network. Early life and education Moghadam was born to an Iranian Jewish family on November 17, 1982, and grew up in Encino, California. His family emigrated from Iran to the United States shortly before he was born. He graduated from Yale University in 2004 with a major in History and International Studies. In 2005, he went to France on a Fulbright scholarship. When he returned in 2005, he enrolled at Stanford Law School, and graduated in 2008 with a J.D. Career After graduating from law school in 2008, Moghadam became an attorney at the law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf. In 2009, many law offices who were trying to endure the Great Recession placed junior employees on "deferral", paying them a partial salary to take time off and encouraging them to intern at other companies. While on deferral from Dewey & LeBoeuf, Moghadam was hired as an intern at Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha, Nebraska. However, shortly before departing for his internship, the internship offer was rescinded and he was fired by Dewey & LeBeouf when a Berkshire Hathaway employee discovered a satirical memo he had written and published on his blog, addressed to "Ballstate Insurance Company" (a reference to the Allstate insurance company, which was a client of Dewey & LeBoeuf).