Shared chapter
Andrew Arrow
Principal Engineer, Andrew Arrow Dev · Early Geni, Yammer, and Bird engineer
Relationship
How we worked together
Andrew and I go back to 1999 at Digital Evolution, where he was working on Warner Bros. games. He later convinced me to leave SOA Software and join Geni. We went on to work together across Geni, Yammer, and Bird, making him one of the longest-running collaborators in my career.
Influence
What I learned
Andrew is one of the most pivotal figures in my career. He opened the door to Geni, then years later kept pushing me to look seriously at Bird. Those two introductions led to two of the most important chapters of my professional life.
Projects
Projects we built together
Geni.com / Yammer / MyHeritage · 2007 – 2013
Geni — one shared family tree for humanity
Andrew convinced me to leave SOA Software and join Geni. When Yammer began inside Geni, he wrote some of the first implementations of the product across both web and mobile. He even built in a sound effect so every new Yammer message played his voice saying “Yum”—a detail I am sure disappeared later, but an unforgettable part of the earliest product.
Read the case studyBird · 2018 – 2025
My story at Bird
Andrew was one of the first people to show me the Bird app before it launched. He kept pinging me to take a closer look at the company, which eventually led to my scooter ride with Justin Balthrop in Santa Monica and the start of my Bird chapter. We later worked together there as Bird grew.
Read the case studyThemes
The work we shared
Elsewhere