Marcin Kleczynski

Marcin Kleczynski (born November 1, 1989) is the chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of American Internet security company, Malwarebytes. After a period working as a computer repair technician and being involved in forums in the mid-2000s, Kleczynski co-founded Malwarebytes with Bruce Harrison in January 2008. By 2014, Malwarebytes had treated over 250 million computers worldwide, with a range of popular products including Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, and more recently, advanced anti-ransomware package Endpoint Security. Kleczynski was named one of Forbes Magazine's "30 Under 30" Rising Stars of Enterprise Technology in 2015.

Early life and background Kleczynski was born in Łódź, Poland in 1989. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 3 years old. He speaks fluent Polish. As a child, he had aspirations to be a train conductor, and later, an airline pilot. He has retained his fascination with flying and obtained his pilot's license in 2011. Kleczynski attended Fenton High School in Bensenville, Illinois, and received his B.S. in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2012 As a result, Malwarebytes was informally established in 2004.

Kleczynski began writing his own free software tools in Visual Basic. With one of the site's regulars, Bruce Harrison, Kleczynski wrote the inaugural version of the company's software. Kleczynski reportedly made his first million by the time he was 19.

In 2014, Malwarebytes received $30 million in funding from Highland Capital, and by the following year it announced that it had treated 250 million computers worldwide, representing about 20-25% of working business computers. In January 2016, Malwarebytes unveiled advanced anti-ransomware package Endpoint Security,

Working with the Malwarebytes team, Kleczynski has delivered several popular products in the Internet security field, including Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, which offers "real-time protection against malware, automated scanning, and automatic updating". Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Mobile, a free Android app which protects smartphones, Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, which protects vulnerable programs from attack, and Malwarebytes Endpoint Security, an advanced anti-ransomware package. Kleczynski cited the reason for launching the anti-ransomware technology in 2016: "In the last six to 12 months, this has just gone so aggressively to the business environment. We see companies from 25 people all the way to 250,000 people getting hit with ransomware".

Awards and philanthropy In 2014, Kleczynski won the Silicon Valley Business Journal'''s 40 Under 40 award, In 2015 he was named one of Forbes Magazine's '30 Under 30' Rising Stars of Enterprise Technology.

According to Silicon Valley Business Journal'', as of 2015 Kleczynski was an investor in Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit specializing in online privacy, and the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.