Mahbod Moghadam

Mahbod Moghadam ( – March 25, 2024) was an American In 2009, he, Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory co-founded Rap Genius (now Genius), a website on which users can submit annotations and interpretations of song lyrics and other content. In 2015, he, Sam Kazemian and Theodor Forselius co-founded Everipedia, a wiki-based online encyclopedia, where he worked as the Chief Community Officer for several years. After leaving Everipedia, he became an entrepreneur-in-residence at the venture capital firm Mucker Capital, then worked on HellaDoge, a cryptocurrency-based social network.

Early life and education Moghadam was born to an Iranian Jewish family on November 17, 1982, and grew up in Encino, California. His family emigrated from Iran to the United States shortly before he was born.

Genius In August 2009, Moghadam, Tom Lehman, and Ilan Zechory founded Rap Genius, a website that initially allowed users to annotate and interpret song lyrics.

Moghadam was included in the 2013 Forbes 30 Under 30 list along with the other Rap Genius cofounders. In 2014, Rap Genius rebranded to Genius and expanded to support annotations for news stories, poetry, and other documents. Moghadam resigned from Genius that same year after receiving negative media attention when he added annotations to the manifesto written by the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings, describing it as "beautifully written". His comments were described by CNN as "tasteless and creepy";

In 2021, Moghadam said he was angered by the "fire sale" of Genius to MediaLab that year, a deal which reportedly made Lehman and Zechory multi-millionaires but did not pay anything to him.

Other activities After leaving Genius, Moghadam started an internet controversy by writing an article in Thought Catalog titled "How To Steal From Whole Foods". He left Everipedia in 2019.

Moghadam began working at venture capital firm Mucker Capital in 2019. Moghadam later worked on HellaDoge, a social media platform based around the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. He later attributed some of his behavior to a benign brain tumor that was discovered and removed in 2013. Believing he was doing a photoshoot with a "playboy photographer" named Gio, Moghadam is shown making the Bloods gang sign and imitating shooting a gun when Cohen asks him to "do something like a black guy." Later Cohen has him pose in front of a green screen so he could later be photoshopped into scenes as though he is feeding starving children.

In September 2018, Moghadam had an epileptic seizure attributable to a second brain tumor, and had brain surgery later that month.

In March 2024, Moghadam died at the age of 41 due to complications from his recurrent brain tumor.