Joel Spolsky, Founder & CEO, Stack Exchange
Joel Spolsky
Founder & CEO, Stack Exchange

Joel Spolsky, founder and CEO of Stack Exchange, is a globally recognized expert on software development. His website Joel on Software is popular with programmers around the world. In 2000, he founded his first company, Fog Creek Software, which creates project management tools for software developers and most recently launched a group project management sharing tool, Trello. Prior to this, Joel worked at Microsoft, where he designed VBA as a member of the Excel team, and at Juno Online Services, where he developed an Internet client used by millions. He has written three books, including Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent (Apress, 2007) and worked as a contributing editor for Inc.magazine. Joel graduated from Yale University with a computer science degree and is also a world-renowned speaker – he delivered the keynote at Talent 42 last year. Before college, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a paratrooper and helped found Kibbutz Hanaton.