{"id":11319,"date":"2016-11-03T18:22:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T18:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/?p=11319"},"modified":"2016-11-29T21:54:35","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T21:54:35","slug":"speaker-spotlight-venmo-cofounders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/speaker-spotlight-venmo-cofounders\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker Spotlight: Andrew Kortina &#038; Iqram Magdon-Ismail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meet technology speakers\u00a0<strong>Andrew Kortina<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>Iqram Magdon-Ismail<\/strong>, Venmo cofounders:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail are the cofounders of Venmo, a mobile payments company that allows\u00a0users to send money through their smartphones.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #666699;\">Their Beginnings&#8230;<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The two met as randomly paired freshman year roommates at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Kortina studied Philosophy and English and Magdon-Ismail studied Computer Science. They\u00a0started their first company together as seniors: A college classifieds site called My College Post. Although nothing came of it, the pair got an apartment in west Philadelphia after graduation. During this time, they worked doing freelance website design and various startup projects.<\/p>\n<p>Their endeavors ranged from a website analytics tool called Swooge to a music site called Philafunk in addition to a dating site called iminlikewithyou. After this,\u00a0Kortina worked at <span class=\"skimlinks-unlinked\">Bit.ly<\/span>\u00a0while Magdon-Ismail worked at Ticketleap, but they both knew that they eventually wanted to team up again for a new startup idea.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #666699;\">How We Got To Venmo<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>So, the pair launched Venmo in 2009. It started as a mobile music company that allowed people to send a text to a band to have an .mp3 show up in their email. The company took a pivot towards its present day function due to an incident in which\u00a0Magdon-Ismail came to visit Kortina in New York City for the weekend yet forgot his wallet at home. Although Kortina covered Magdon-Ismail&#8217;s expenses, they discovered paying people back, especially with checks, was extremely difficult. As a result, they created Venmo.<\/p>\n<p>In an Elite Daily &#8220;Disruptive&#8221; series video, Michael Vaughn, Venmo General Manager, discusses Venmo&#8217;s mission and purpose.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Venmo&#8217;s case, we were taking something that shouldn&#8217;t be that hard and makng it simpler,&#8221; says Vaughn. &#8220;Our mission for years has been to connect the world and empower people through payments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>View the full video here:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zqfesTEChhI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/h3>\n<hr \/>\n<p>For more information on Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail or other top technology and start-up speakers check out our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/\">website<\/a>. Want more information about booking and events?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/infopages\/contactus.php\">Contact us<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>For related technology speakers, check out our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/\/lists\/fintech.php\">Top Financial Technology<\/a> speakers list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet technology speakers\u00a0Andrew Kortina\u00a0and\u00a0Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Venmo cofounders: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail are the cofounders of Venmo, a mobile payments company that allows\u00a0users to send money through their smartphones. Their Beginnings&#8230; The two met as randomly paired freshman year roommates at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Kortina studied Philosophy and English [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":11561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[262],"tags":[320,259,265,307],"class_list":{"0":"post-11319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-speaker-spotlight","8":"tag-app","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-mobile-innovation","11":"tag-technology"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Iqram-Magdon-Ismail-and-Andrew-Kortina.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11319"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11696,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319\/revisions\/11696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}