Rakesh Agrawal's blog

Rakesh Agrawal's personal blog

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My genius list

One of my favorite things about what I do is the opportunity to meet some brilliant people. It seems that every week I meet someone who I’d consider a genius. If you ever have the opportunity for a meeting with them, I highly recommend making the time.

These are all people I’ve met in person. In all but a couple of cases, I’ve met the many times.

I meet so many people that I’ve undoubtedly left some people off the list. My apologies if I left you off.

I recognize that women are underrepresented in this list. This is a function of:

  • Overall shortage of women in tech.
  • The fields I focus on — finance, VC, payments and media. These fields have even smaller percentages of women than tech overall.
  • Who will take meetings with me.

Emily White, COO of Snapchat, is incredible. One of the smartest people I’ve met. (And a dear friend to boot.)

Note that the only order here is alphabetical. These people are so talented that it would be hard to rank them.