Sandy Jen

Cofounder of Meebo; cofounder of Honor

• Born: 1981?
• Place of Birth: Silver Spring, Maryland

Primary Company/Organization: Meebo

Introduction

Sandy Jen is an entrepreneur who, together with cofounders Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry, launched the first web-based instant-messaging product, Meebo Messenger, in September 2005. Meebo represented a revolutionary approach to person-to-person (P2P) communication in the days before social media was a household term. As chief technology officer, Jen drove the company's back-end development and innovation as it continued to launch new products to meet the evolving communication and information needs of users. In June 2012, Jen joined Google's technology team, working on Google+, following that company's acquisition of Meebo. Two years later she cofounded Honor, a tech company assisting older adults and care-giving agencies. She shares her experiences as a female technology leader with students and young entrepreneurs.

Early Life

Sandy Jen was born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland. The daughter of two professional engineers, she grew up in a structured, goal-focused, achievement-oriented environment. She was a diligent student in school and from a very early age focused her attention and efforts on college. She strove not only to attain top grades but also to log extracurricular activities and prepare herself for acing college entrance exams and essays.

When she entered high school, Jen embraced the opportunity to participate in the institution's four-year computer science program. There she learned her first programming languages: BASIC, Pascal, and C++. Based on that programming foundation, Jen chose to skip the introductory courses and enrolled in the accelerated computer programming track when she began attending college at Stanford University in California. She worked as a teacher's assistant in some classes and ultimately decided to make computer science her major. Jen graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in computer science in 2003.

During her college career, Jen devoted herself to two things: academic achievement and preparing for the future. For Jen, that meant ensuring she that was well positioned to secure a solid job with a good company in her field. Once engaged in the professional workforce, however, Jen quickly became disenchanted by the realities of life as a corporate employee. She began to reevaluate her environment and her priorities. In the end, she decided that she would not be able to achieve her goals for changing the world from the confines of a cubicle.

Life's Work

After her graduation from Stanford in 2003, Jen began working as an enterprise software developer for semiconductor company Xilinx in San Jose, California. In 2012, Jen told Matthew Wise of FounderLY that the reality of sitting in a cubicle all day staring at a computer monitor made her realize that she wanted more. At about the same time, the husband of a college acquaintance, Elaine Wherry, had been contacted by his friend Seth Sternberg about recruiting some top Stanford talent to work on a start-up.

When Sternberg, Wherry, and Jen eventually got together to discuss the potential for a partnership, they immediately recognized that their vision, talents, and personalities complemented each other. The three began to brainstorm and evaluate ideas for creating a consumer-focused technology start-up in their spare time. They purchased several servers with their personal credit cards and registered the domain name Meebo right away, even although the details of the company had not been determined. The three met weekly in their free time to discuss their options and approaches. Initially, they focused on backup software. Then they shifted their attention to peer-to-peer file sharing. By March 2005, the team had decided on instant-messaging facilitation as the core of the business.

At that time, social media was a fledgling industry. Individuals seeking to share information through real-time communication relied mainly on instant messaging (IM). However, the IM capability was desktop-specific, meaning that the application had to be installed on both the user's and the recipient's desktops in order for the information exchange to occur. The idea behind Meebo was to use the Internet to expand and facilitate access to IM by users, regardless of their physical location or individual desktop software. Jen had a strong personal need for such a service and recognized that others would as well.

With that goal in mind, Jen, Wherry, and Sternberg spent the next several months developing their product while still working at their regular, full-time jobs. Jen and Wherry left their positions in August 2005 and spent a month completing the coding required to get Meebo ready for launch the following month.

Working on a shoestring budget, Jen and her Meebo cofounders used blog posts on Digg and other sites to promote the availability of Meebo Messenger, their new web-based IM service via Meebo.com. It was the first product of its kind and filled an immediate need in the marketplace. Meebo's innovative approach of asking for—and acting upon—user feedback early in its existence also spurred positive chat both in technology circles and among consumer user groups. Within twenty-four hours of the launch, Meebo.com had attracted some five hundred users. Within weeks, tens of thousands of people were using Meebo to communicate with each other. By the end of the year, Meebo was being courted by investors and had accepted funding from Sequoia Capital.

Jen, Wherry, and Sternberg used those dollars to grow the company. As vice president of engineering for Meebo, Jen took the lead on back-end technology development. With the advent of Web 2.0 and the soaring success of social media, she quickly recognized that the way people were communicating with one another was changing and that Meebo had to expand beyond IM. She also realized that Meebo's infrastructure made it uniquely positioned to provide other innovative products designed to help users connect, navigate the Internet, and hone in on information specifically relevant to them. Jen told Christina Warren in a 2011 interview for Mashable Business that her vision for Meebo was to create an Internet that is truly driven by users and their interests rather than algorithms and assumptions. To answer that call, Jen and her team developed numerous mobile applications and sharing tools, including MeeboMiniBar, a site check-in product, and MeeboBar, a content platform that connects the user, site publisher, and site advertisers simultaneously. The products helped propel Meebo to nearly two hundred unique utilizations by 2012. As a result, the company expanded its operations to include some two hundred employees in offices across the United States.

By the time Meebo was acquired by Google in June 2012, Jen had assumed the role of chief technology officer. In that capacity, she was responsible for devising and implementing Meebo's engineering development goals and coordinating front- and back-end technology efforts across the company. She and some members of her engineering team joined Google as part of the acquisition. She and her team worked with Google+ to transition and evolve the MeeboBar product. Jen remained at Google for a year.

In September 2014 Jen cofounded Honor. The start-up connects seniors who wish to age in place with services and providing administrative support to elder-care agencies. As of 2024, Jen was the company's chief techology officer (CTO). Jen has said that much of the company's techology is centered on caregivers because this enables them to better care for others.

Personal Life

Jen is accustomed to the grueling schedule associated with launching and running a business, yet she remains a staunch advocate for maintaining a work-life balance. Her personal pursuits tend to fall on the physical side: yoga, running, rock climbing, and even Ultimate Frisbee. Although she resides in California, Jen has also been a lifelong fan of her hometown-area Major League Baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles.

Jen serves as a guest speaker and mentor to students and fledgling entrepreneurs, with a particular focus on female entrepreneurs in Web 2.0 and other technology-based sectors. In her messages to others, she emphasizes the importance of personal passion, strong self-confidence, excellent team support, and the ability and willingness to listen intuitively to the input of others. She was the recipient of a Founders Fund TechFellow Award in Engineering Leadership in 2009 and continues to rank on lists of important young entrepreneurs.

Bibliography

Buckman, Rebecca, and Mylene Mangalindan. “Financing Round Values Meebo at $200 Million.” Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition, May 2008: C3. Print.

Cassavoy, Liane. “Meebo Tops in Web-Based IM Services.” PC World 25.7 (2007): 66. Print.

Hampton, Alison, Sarah Cooper, and Pauric McGowan. “Female Entrepreneurial Networks and Networking Activity in Technology-Based Ventures.” International Small Business Journal 27.2 (2009): 193–214. Print.

"Honor CTO Bringing Tech to the Home Care Industry." Silicon Republic, 3 Feb. 2023, www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/honor-technology-sandy-jen-home-care-tech. Accessed 7 Mar. 2024.

Jen, Sandy. “Sandy Jen: Chill Out.” Daily Muse 13 Sept. 2011. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.

Moscaritolo, Angela. “After Google Acquisition, Meebo Shutting Down July 11.” PC Magazine 11 June 2012. Print.

Shields, Mike. “Meebo Finds Its Niche.” Mediaweek 20.28 (2010): 31. Print.