Amber Atherton
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Amber Atherton is a former founder, whose Y Combinator backed start-up was acquired by Discord. She is the author of the best selling book ‘The Rise of Virtual Communities’ published by Apress. Born in Hong Kong, Atherton began coding as a kid. Building websites, mini-games and Neopets communities. At 16 she started a popular blog, My Flash Trash, which evolved into one of Europe’s largest online jewelry and accessories marketplaces. After the merger of her first startup, Amber found fame in the UK, co-creating the hit TV show Made in Chelsea. She went on to be named by the Evening Standard as one of London’s Most Influential Londoners, by Vogue as 1 of the top 5 people in Digital Fashion, and joined Forbes’ 30 under 30 list.
In 2017 Atherton founded the community software startup, Zyper, using NLP and Computer Vision to help creators and brands find their top fans, and build private, chat based, fan communities. Atherton moved to Palo Alto to join YC, raised a seed round, and in 2021, exited the company to Discord. At Discord, Atherton was responsible for growth. Launching new verticals orbiting gaming, driving GTM in international markets and spearheading new revenue initiatives. Atherton is credited with pioneering the community startup space, frequently appearing on Bloomberg, CNBC, and speaking at Websummit and Davos. Atherton met Jason Yeh and Brian Cho in 2021 and shared their vision of a future shaped by games. After working as a Venture Partner for a year, Atherton joined the Patron team full time in 2023. That same year, Atherton was named by Business Insider as a Rising Star in VC. Atherton looks for founders with a deep understanding of their early user base and an unstoppable pace of execution. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, and is known to be found late at night on tumblr, hackernews or racing at the swimming pool.