Homeless at 17, Later a Tech CEO

Everette Taylor grew up on the south side of Richmond, Virginia, which he describes as very far from the tech hub of Silicon Valley. Fortune reports that many men in his family were incarcerated, and that when his mother saw him heading down a bad path as a teenager, she made him get a job. His first job was in marketing at a nonprofit, Eastern National, which he credits with getting him off the streets.

His family fell on hard times, and he became homeless by his senior year of high school, when he was 17. Blavity reports that he lived in his car, and says the experience taught him how to stand in another person's shoes. Fortune adds that he used the local library for shelter, and that this is where he discovered tech. He has said the period gave him a relentless mindset and high emotional intelligence, which he considers essential for founders.

He saved money and worked odd jobs, including washing windshields, to apply to Virginia Tech. He enrolled but dropped out shortly after arriving in Blacksburg to help his mother. He then founded an event-planning firm, EZ Events, and later sold it. He moved to Silicon Valley to work under the executive coach Sean Ellis, who coined the term growth hacking.

About ten years after he was homeless he was a serial entrepreneur who had built four startups, including GrowthHackers, a software company and online community with over two million users worldwide. He became chief marketing officer at a sticker company at 25, later at Skurt, and then at Artsy for three years, and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30. In September 2022, at 33, he became chief executive of Kickstarter.