Finbarr Taylor is a Scottish software engineer turned startup founder and investor with 14 years of experience building and scaling developer-centric products from Palo Alto. He co-founded Shogun, serving as CTO and CEO, where he shipped flagship products, pivoted to storefront optimization, and grew ARR into eight figures while raising over $100M and scaling the team through high-growth cycles. Now a Y Combinator Visiting Partner and angel investor in 60+ startups, he helps founders build products people want and has backed companies like Deel and Fathom. Technically hands-on, he led applied AI initiatives at Shogun—RAG, evals, agents and compaction—and personally built early versions of core products. His background spans backend systems at Groupon and high-traffic consumer projects like Giveit100 and Pebble, reflecting a mix of product intuition and operational rigor. He holds an MEng with distinction from the University of Strathclyde and brings a rare combination of engineering depth, operator experience, and active early-stage investing.
14 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Engineering with distinction Computer Science, Master of Engineering with distinction Computer Science at University of Strathclyde
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