Tiger Lan

Beginning in 1986 when the computer industry was still in its infancy, Tiger Lan began honing the skills in programming and data structure manipulation that would bring him professional success in Silicon Valley more than a decade later. Having already gained several years of coding and algorithm experience, Tiger Lan enrolled in Beijing’s renowned Tsinghua University in 1993. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences, Tiger Lan relocated to the United States and pursued a Master’s degree from Michigan State University in the same field.

Over the course of his career, Tiger Lan has helped create and launch popular web-based products for average users and more specialized applications for business purposes. While finishing his graduate work, Tiger Lan began capitalizing on his passion for software development with a stint at Microsoft helping to develop core features of Hotmail. After earning his Master’s degree in 2000, Tiger Lan accepted a position with Ariba, Inc., as a Senior Software Engineer, in which capacity he played a key role in the creation of the Ariba Supplier Network, Ariba Analytics, Ariba Category Management, and Ariba Contract Workbench.

In May 2006, Tiger Lan joined Plaxo, Inc., where he would serve as Director of Engineering. During this time, Tiger Lan’s expertise in technical architecture as well as his distinctly entrepreneurial spirit combined to produce a revolution in the company’s development cycle. In one particularly impressive maneuver, Tiger Lan compressed the release phase of Plaxo’s production cycle from three months to a single week via a rapid development process that he synthesized from previous programming techniques and his own innovations. Tiger Lan also played a key role in creating and perfecting one of Plaxo’s central products, Address Book Plaxo 4.0, an intelligent social information archive which continuously updates itself and adds pertinent data. Address Book Plaxo 4.0 launched in 2010, the same year that Tiger Lan left the company to join Reputation.com, Inc., where he presently directs the company’s product development activities as the Chief Technology Officer.