Saybrook College presents a conversation with
Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory
Co-founders, [Rap]Genius
Genius (birth name ‘Rap Genius’) is a massive online knowledge project that allows users to provide annotations and interpretation of song lyrics, news stories, primary source documents, poetry, and other forms of texts. The annotations are powered by a worldwide community as well as famous and notable figures. Some annotations are deeply informative, while others are more playful and inventive; the best annotations include a little bit of everything.
Co-founders Tom and Ilan have included the following biographies that will give you a sense of their humor and vision for Genius:
Ilan Zechory is from Detroit Michigan; Malcolm X was an important figure in his early development. It may have been Malcolm X’s swagger and preachings that led Ilan to focus on religious studies at Yale, where he met his co-founders Tom and Mahbod. His senior thesis at Yale was on the Divine Religion of the Actual God, a study of a reclusive man who created his own religion (similar to Genius in certain aspects) in the 1980s. Prior to starting Genius, Ilan wrote for HBO’s Deadwood. He worked at Google for two years, where he learned to appreciate sushi and eat it every day. Ilan is also a clinically trained hypnotherapist.
Originally from Miami, Tom Lehman attended Yale University where he was best friends with Mahbod and Ilan. He majored in Ethics, Politics, Economics, Mathematics and Philosophy… 5 majors. (Just kidding – it’s actually just two joint majors.) Tom wrote his senior thesis on Kelo v. the City of New London, a seminal Supreme Court ruling on Eminent Domain (but if you read the paper you’ll find it wasn’t thaaaaat seminal). Though his passion for takings almost took him to law school, in the end he opted for money rather than justice and worked at the hedge fund of David E. Shaw, where he learned to code… so it was a good choice. He went on to build Genius and is often referred to as the “swagged out Mark Zuckerberg” by the press.