—— Story
Hackathons to exits.
Twenty years of building — from a CMU CS lab to a Disrupt hackathon floor to two acquisitions and a NASDAQ listing.
2004
Carnegie Mellon
Graduates with a B.S. in Information Systems. Phish's 2004 "breakup" frees him to focus on a career instead of following them on tour.
Source ↗2004–10
The tinkerer years
Lead software engineer at Gilt Groupe; founds Sympact and Bandwith.us (friends-and-family concert ticketing); technical advisor to HeadCount, registering voters at concerts.
Source ↗2010
GroupMe in 18 hours
Builds a working group-texting prototype with Jared Hecht at the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC hackathon. Investors are interested on the Disrupt floor itself.
Source ↗2011
SXSW, then Skype
The GroupMe Grill wins the SXSW Breakout Digital Trend award. In August, Skype acquires GroupMe for a reported ~$85M — Steve is 27. Weeks later, Microsoft buys Skype.
Source ↗2012
SummerQAmp & HeadCount
Co-launches SummerQAmp, a national program creating paid tech apprenticeships for young people.
Source ↗2013
Splice
Co-founds "GitHub for musicians" with Matt Aimonetti after Jon Gutwillig asks: you have these tools for software — where are they for music?
Source ↗2014
Blade
Co-founds the urban air mobility company with Rob Wiesenthal.
Source ↗2021
Two milestones
Splice raises a $55M Series D led by Goldman Sachs at a reported ~$500M valuation. Blade goes public via SPAC — NASDAQ: BLDE.
Source ↗2022
Back to the keyboard
Steps down as Splice CEO after eight years; becomes Executive Chairman and returns to writing code.
Source ↗2024
SuppCo
Launches the supplement companion app — TrustScore ratings, stack analysis, 200K+ products — on a $5.5M seed from USV and True Ventures.
Source ↗2026
Function
Function Health acquires SuppCo; the whole team joins. Steve is now at Function — and building the BandWith fan platform on the side.
Source ↗