Jonathan Chen: UMD CMNS Commencement Spring 2014
Jonathan Chen, Chief Technology Officer at FiscalNote, Inc. and graduating senior (B.S. ’14, computer science) delivers the student commencement speech for the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences Spring 2014 Graduation Ceremony at the University of Maryland, College Park.
In 2013, Chen came up with a fearless idea—to aggregate and analyze government legislation and predict the passage of a bill in all 50 states and Congress. Motivated by his innovative and entrepreneurial determination, that idea—which started as a spark—led Chen to create the company FiscalNote. FiscalNote provides a web-based software platform, called Prophecy, which aggregates and analyzes state and federal government legislation in real time and predicts government action using machine learning and natural language processing.
The company, which Chen co-founded with two friends from high school, Tim Hwang and Gerald Yao, raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Mark Cuban, Jerry Yang (co-founder of Yahoo), NEA, and First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund back in the fall of 2013. FiscalNote now boasts 17 full-time employees and an office located in the heart of Washington, D.C.
In the beginning of his speech he takes a selfie of himself and the audience after being inspired by the selfie President Loh and Governor O’Malley took during the Main University Commencement the day before.
Throughout his speech, Jonathan highlights the ideas of creative thinking and active collaboration, which are factors that he believes fuel innovation and discovery.
