Maciej Cegłowski
Maciej Cegłowski | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1975 Warsaw, Poland |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, web developer, public speaker, social commentator |
| Years active | 1997–present |
| Known for | Founder of Pinboard |
| Notable work | Scott and Scurvy |
Maciej Cegłowski (born 1975) is a Polish-American entrepreneur, web developer, public speaker, and social commentator residing in San Francisco, California. He is the founder and proprietor of the bookmarking platform Pinboard, which he characterizes as a bookmarking service tailored for introverted users.
Career
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Cegłowski relocated to the United States at the age of six in 1981. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Middlebury College in 1997, where he focused on Russian, French, and studio art. Following graduation, he took on roles as a backend developer and community manager at Yahoo!’s Brickhouse in San Francisco, during which time he created FareMaps, a visual airfare search engine. Collaborating with Joshua Schachter and Peter Gadjokov, he co-developed LOAF (List of All Friends), a privacy-conscious tool for sharing social network contacts via email.
In 2009, after departing from Yahoo!, Cegłowski launched Pinboard. Motivated by early iterations of the bookmarking service Delicious, which had been acquired by Yahoo!, he perceived mismanagement at Delicious and sought to establish a more privacy-oriented and successful bookmarking platform. As of 2016, he remained the sole full-time employee of Pinboard, maintaining a modest subscription-based business model free from advertising that prioritizes user privacy.
In December 2012, Cegłowski introduced the Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud initiative, providing $37 and promotional support to six startups aimed at encouraging cost-effective bootstrapping. The recipients were announced in January 2013.
During 2016, he participated in a Hacker News competition for a Y Combinator Fellowship. Despite his critical stance towards Y Combinator and humorously describing his submission as "the Bay Area's slowest-growing unicorn," Pinboard garnered the highest number of votes but was ultimately not selected.
Additionally, Cegłowski contributed as a technical advisor for the 2018 season of HBO’s comedy series Silicon Valley.
Speaking and writing
Cegłowski is recognized for his incisive critiques of the technology sector, delivering presentations from 2013 through 2017 that questioned Silicon Valley’s practices and modern Internet culture. In 2016, he established Tech Solidarity to organize technology workers around ethical issues through American labor law frameworks. Between 2018 and 2020, this group shifted its efforts toward fundraising for a ‘Great Slate’ of political candidates in the United States. He has also been active in supporting the 2019 Hong Kong protests and has recently voiced criticism regarding NASA’s and private companies’ plans for human missions to Mars.
Known for his conference talks addressing technology’s societal consequences, Cegłowski frequently uses Twitter to satirize Silicon Valley’s flaws. He has extensively analyzed the drawbacks of advertising-funded business models, emphasizing how programmatic advertising combined with data collection fuels surveillance capitalism. Drawing parallels between large-scale user data repositories and authoritarian surveillance systems reminiscent of his Central European upbringing, he highlights significant privacy concerns. Advocating for streamlined web design, he opposes excessively complex websites that disadvantage users with limited internet access.
Cory Doctorow has described him as a "provocative" voice on Internet-related challenges. Cegłowski has delivered talks at events such as dConstruct, Webstock, XOXO Festival, O'Reilly conferences, among others. His presentations often focus on sustainable startup development by emphasizing user input and adopting a philosophy of "failing slowly." He champions simplicity and reliability over adopting cutting-edge technologies in building Pinboard to keep operational expenses low and maintain manageability as a solo operator. His speeches frequently critique online advertising’s role in expanding digital surveillance.
On Pinboard’s blog, Cegłowski writes about site development processes, strategies for growth, advantages of paid services, and offers critiques of social media platforms like Facebook. His personal blog Idlewords features essays on travel and culinary experiences, including an Antarctic expedition funded via Kickstarter in 2016.
He has contributed feature articles to Wired magazine and opinion pieces to The New York Times. His viewpoints have been referenced across prominent publications such as Time, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Economist, TechCrunch, Wired News, Bloomberg View, Mashable, and Gigaom.
Notable Publications
- Scott and Scurvy, authored by Maciej Ceglowski (March 6, 2010), explores the topics of Scurvy and Vitamin C