Evan Beard

Beard attended Duke University,^[10] where he studied computer science and graduated with distinction in economics in 2009.^[11] While finishing school he wrote a widely distributed iOS app, “Girlfriend Keeper”, which attracted attention from international media, including Good Morning America, the LA Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and local news and radio stations.^[12][13] The app asked for details about one's significant other and sent automated emails and text messages expressing affection, such as "it's only 67 days until your birthday, I might get you something green like your eyes".

In 2009, shortly after graduating college, Beard co-founded Etacts and was admitted to the Y-Combinator seed accelerator.^[14] Etacts was a relationship management app that provided a unified view of one's contacts and all emails, calls, and texts with them.^[15] It allowed setting reminders on one’s contacts to remember to stay in touch with them.^[16][17] It also provided a contextual widget within Gmail that automatically showed biographical details next to emails, such as the education and work history of your correspondents.^[18] The company raised $700,000 from prominent angel investors, including Ron Conway and Ashton Kutcher.^[19] In 2010, Etacts was acquired by Salesforce.com,^[20][21][22] where Beard subsequently worked in engineering as a Senior Member of Technical Staff.

In 2011, Beard co-founded Gridtech Inc which created ArmorHub.com.^[9][23] ArmorHub is an app that allows businesses to quickly scan their websites for application-level security vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting. ArmorHub was acquired by Spirent Communications, a publicly traded British company.^[24]

In 2013, Beard moved to Los Angeles to co-found A Plus with Ashton Kutcher and Kendall Dabaghi.^[25][26][27] A Plus is a technology-focused media company that creates positive journalism for millennials and uses its own technology for content creation, optimization and distribution. After a soft launch in early 2014, A Plus grew to 50 million unique visitors per month and six months after launch was the fastest growing site in comScore’s Mobile Metrix database.^[27][28] The site raised $3.5m from investors in 2015 and expects $8 million in revenue in 2016.^[3] A Plus started in Kutcher’s living room and moved to New York City in 2014.^[27]