Eric Nakagawa
American writer, and co-founder of I Can Has Cheezburger? website
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eric Nakagawa is an American software developer and author. He is best known as the co-founder of the humor site I Can Has Cheezburger? and for popularizing lolspeak.[1]
Education and career
Prior to co-founding I Can Has Cheezburger? Nakagawa worked as a software developer in Honolulu, Hawaii.[2] "In early 2007, after a bad day at work, Eric Nakagawa asked his friend (and future co-founder) Kari Unebasami to send him a photo of something cute to make him feel better. She sent over a few cat images, superimposed with phonetically spelled phrases, or lolspeak, and the two knew they’d found their calling."[3] Nakagawa and Unebasami sold I Can Has Cheezburger? to Ben Huh in July 2007.[4] ICHC was instrumental in bringing animal-based image macros and lolspeak into mainstream usage.[5]
Nakagawa is a New York Times bestselling author with his book "I Can Has Cheezburger?" appearing on the New York Times Best Sellers list in January 2009.[6]
Nakagawa is a public speaker on the subject of web development. He spoke at SXSW in March 2008 [7] about the LolCats success, and was featured in the Google Authors Series.[8]
In 2012 he co-founded the travel website SimpleHoney.[9] It was acquired by Ripple in April 2013.[10]
As of June 2019, Nakagawa was head of open-source for Facebook's cryptocurrency project Libra.[11]