Mahbod Moghadam, who rose to fame because the co-founder of Genius, has died

Mahbod Moghadam, the controversial, never-boring co-founder of Genius and Everipedia, in addition to an angel investor, handed away final month at age 41 owing to “complications from a recurring brain tumor,” in response to a post attributed to his household and revealed on Genius.

The startup world seems to have caught wind of his passing simply this weekend, with quite a few tributes bobbing up on the X platform, together with by former TechCrunch writer-turned-investor Josh Constine, who as soon as interviewed Moghadam and his founders at Genius when the corporate was nonetheless in its relative infancy and known as Rap Genius. Wrote Constine: “RIP to Mahbod. A complex, edgy, and at times problematic guy, but also genuinely funny, brilliant, and always unique.”

Moghadam was most not too long ago residing in Los Angeles, the place, after spending roughly 20 months with the enterprise agency Mucker Capital as an entrepreneur in residence, he was targeted partially on determining schemes to assist creators receives a commission extra straight for his or her work.

A kind of current efforts was HellaDoge, a short-lived social media platform that provided to pay its customers dogecoin for contributing dogecoin-related content material for the good thing about the remainder of the platform’s customers. The ostensible thought was that, in contrast to a Fb or Twitter, which generate advert income for themselves based mostly on the engagement of their customers, HellaDoge’s customers would profit straight from their participation.

In an interview 11 months in the past with the net media outfit “According 2 Hip Hop,” Moghadam talked a few related thought for an organization known as Communistagram the place, he stated, “you’d connect your Venmo and [as a creator] just get paid for using it,” somewhat than depend on Spotify or YouTube to obtain fee.

Moghadam’s curiosity in how individuals can and will receives a commission dates again to 2009. After graduating from Yale after which Stanford Legislation Faculty, he grew to become a lawyer simply because the economic system was crashing in 2008. In that very same interview from final 12 months, Modhadam stated he was “just, like, tiptoeing” across the places of work of the legislation agency the place he landed his first job –  Dewey & LeBoeuf  – and praying he wouldn’t be fired. 

When the inevitable occurred – Modhadam stated the legislation agency “ended up basically just giving us some money to go away” – he used the cash to co-found Rap Genius with two of his Yale associates: Ilan Zechory and Tom Lehman.

Initially, the location invited customers to annotate and clarify hip-hop lyrics, ultimately turning into so well-known that rappers gravitated to the platform to elucidate their very own lyrics – in addition to to right customers who’d mangled them – together with the rapper Nas, who grew to become an advisor and one among its first buyers.

By the point that Rap Genius graced the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in Could 2013, the three had landed funding from Andreessen Horowitz and have been on the verge of rebranding Rap Genius as Genius and increasing its remit.

However Modhadam additionally started attracting consideration to the annotation firm for belligerent conduct, each private and non-private. In November 2013, he attributed his poor conduct to a fetal benign mind tumor that was eliminated in emergency surgical procedure. He saved pushing the envelope, nonetheless. Certainly, in 2014, after posting tasteless feedback as annotations after a mass assassin’s manifesto was posted to Genius’s platform, Modhadam resigned on the urging of Lehman, who was the corporate’s CEO.

Modhadam later co-founded Everipedia, a now-defunct decentralized, blockchain-based encyclopedia that allowed customers to create pages on any subject so long as the content material was impartial and it was cited.

Because it was winding down, he joined Mucker Capital.

Wanting again, Modhadam expressed dismay that Genius contributors weren’t paid for serving to to construct out the platform. “The only reason Genius can get by with doing slave labor for lyrics is because people love music so much,” he stated throughout final 12 months’s interview with In accordance 2 Hip Hop.

Both manner, the corporate fell in need of its ambitions, failing to develop far past its core viewers of rap followers and unsuccessfully suing Google for copying and posting its lyrics on the prime of search outcomes to seize customers who may in any other case have visited Genius.

In 2021, it offered for $80 million – lower than half it went on to boost from enterprise buyers – to a holding firm.

In the meantime, Modhadam by no means reached the identical heights professionally as throughout the early days of Genius, whilst he remained extremely regarded by a lot of Genius’s most ardent followers, showing on quite a lot of podcasts the place enthusiastic hosts fawned over him.

Modhadam additionally by no means forgave Lehman and was nonetheless attempting to sue the corporate as of final 12 months in an try and “squeeze some juice from this rock,” he stated in that interview final 12 months.

Slamming the brand new house owners of Genius, Modhadam had added that at “at least the [original] CEO [Lehman] straight up built Genius with his own two hands. He’s a nerd. That’s the only good thing about him.”