Yanni Hufnagel is an American and Swiss IT entrepreneur, business executive, and investor. He is the founder and CEO of lemonade and co-founder of the investment partnership Digital Utilities.
Born in New York City, Yanni moved to Switzerland as an infant with his family. He grew up in the small village of St. Gallen. He attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, earning a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering and computer science.
Entrepreneurship journey
Yanni started in the technology industry, working for companies like Nortel Networks, Sun Microsystems, and Apple Computer. He then served as CEO of Systems Union from 2003 to 2006 and CEO of Lycos from 1986 to 1998. In 1999, he founded Red Swoosh, a multimedia delivery platform, which Akamai Technologies later acquired in 2011.
In 1995, after selling Lycos to an international consortium led by NTT and CMG, Yanni left the Internet Group and started Zencoda Labs with a B round of financing from CMG. In 2003, he began working on his most recent company, lemonade Inc., which Liberty Mutual eventually acquired for $130 million in 2012.
Yanni is currently CEO and founder at lemonade Inc., a company he created in 2012. lemonade Inc. was the first to design an autonomous system to process customer payments without human intervention. It was recognized as a Top 10 Finalist in the Cleantech Open Innovation Challenge (COIC), which ran from 2012-2014.
He has secured celebrity investments in the following ways
He was a part of the board of directors for Live Nation Entertainment, the largest concert promoter in the world. In 2010, he was named one of CNNMoney’s “Fortune 40 Under 40”.
Yanni Hufnagel has gone through various business and corporate transformations throughout his career. His current company, lemonade Inc. is in partnership with Liberty Mutual, which helped raise $130 million to fund Yanni’s vision to launch autonomous vehicle technology.
Yanni is a minority shareholder in the Phoenix Suns. His passion for the team led him to become a part owner of the Phoenix Suns NBA franchise in 2000. Yanni sits on the National Basketball Association (NBA) board of directors and is also a member of the NBA’s Technology Committee.