3x founder

Ian Fong

Co-Founder @ Chert (YC P26) ⋅ Z Fellow⋅ Math + Econ @ NYU

Co-founder

Chert· Spring 2026New York City Metropolitan Area

in LinkedIn 𝕏 @ianyfong

2026Co-founder· Chert (YC P26)

Founder · since 2025

Company

Chert (YC P26)

Role

Co-Founder

current

Stage

—

no public source

Raised

—

no public source

Based

San Francisco, California, United States

current

Founder / co-founder — the company's markEmployee / research role

Source: LinkedIn work history

Profile coverage5 of 7 · missing posts, contact

Chert

iMessage infrastructure for business

Spring 2026

Experience

Career

Chert (YC P26)
Co-founder
Co-Founder · San Francisco, California, United States · 2026 – Present
2026
Chert (YC P26)
Chief Technology Officer · San Francisco, California, United States · 2026 – Present
2026
Anthropic
Claude Campus Ambassador · New York, United States · 2025 – Present
2025
Nodal CLI
Co-founder
Co-Founder · New York, United States · 2025 – 2026
2025
Photon
Founder
Founder in Residence · 2025
2025

Bio

My name is Ian. I'm building Chert, the conversational interface that lets teams send, receive, and automate conversation through our APIs. Before this, I studied Mathematics and CS/Economics at NYU, did fast algorithm research at Courant, and won 8 hackathons(including MIT, Harvard, Penn, Princeton) along the way. Outside of work, I run triathlons, play Go, and hit random hackathons with Gary. fun fact: I've lived in a total of 16 cities in 20 years of my life.