Camille Hearst

Camille Hearst is a female African-American entrepreneur and innovator,[1] credited in several online news publications for her decades-long contribution to the technology, social network, digital music service and product design sectors.

[4] In her early career, she worked for Google, YouTube, Apple iTunes, and Hailo before launching Kit, a social network service.

[5] Hearst is a native, born and raised in San Francisco, CA, and attended public schools while growing up.

[6] Hearst attended Stanford University earning her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Science, Technology, Society/Product Design and Management, and Engineering.

[7] According to Project Diane's yearlong intersectional study performed in 2016,[7] Hearst was considered only the 12th African-American female entrepreneur to fundraise more than $1M in outside capital as part of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial demographic segment in the U.S.[9] The definitive study quantified that Black female entrepreneurs were recorded to own 60 percent of all black small-to-medium startups and enterprises,[3] generating nearly $44 billion annually among the estimated 1.5 million businesses registered in the U.S.[9] In June 2018, Patreon acquired Kit for its merchandising logistics development with $15 million in gross merchandise revenue to strengthen Patreon's bundle merchandise subscription service.

In addition, the M&A deal retained ninety percent of Kit's remote New York product and engineering teams.