Fred Benenson

Fred is the creator of Pitch Deck, a game where you and your friends make ridiculous, creative pitches for objectively bad startup ideas.

He was the second employee at Kickstarter and their VP of Data. He's also worked at Y Combinator, Creative Commons and taught at ITP, where he graduated in 2008.

In 2010 Fred published Emoji Dick, a emoji translation of Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick. In 2013, the book became the first emoji book acquired by the Library of Congress. He is also the author of "How to Speak Emoji" published by Ebury Press, a Penguin / Randomhouse UK imprint.

He studied philosophy and computer science in undergrad, and was influential in the students for free culture movement, a copyright reform organization. He's written for the Los Angeles Times, Bookforum, WIRED and 2600 and is on the board of Rhizome.org.

[Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.]