Matt Calkins

Matt Calkins is the co-founder, CEO, chairman, and president of Appian Corporation, and a world champion board gamer.

Early life and career Calkins grew up in Mill Valley, California. When he was 26, he left MicroStrategy and co-founded Appian. As of 2019, Calkins owns just under half of the company which is valued at $2.1 billion. Calkins believes there are different dimensions of AI.

Appian Calkins left MicroStrategy in 1999 in order to launch Appian Corporation. The company went public in 2017 and Calkins owns just under half of it. He has collected 1,000 games, His philosophy is that business and gaming have a lot of similarities: business skills can make someone a better game player, and playing games helps to make him a better CEO.

Calkins created the board games Sekigahara, Tin Goose, Charioteer, and Magnet.

Sekigahara: players recreate the 1600 Battle of Sekigahara in Japan Magnet: an “abstract game where players try to get their king to the middle of the board” (runner-up for Games Magazine's Abstract Game of the Year, 2010

Other involvement In 2017, Calkins was named to the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) board of directors. He also serves on the leadership council of the Virginia Public Access Project and the board of the Sorensen Institute. He was previously on the board for the NVTC TechPAC.

Political views Calkins is a supporter of Elon Musk's involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency, but has criticized its implementation, saying: "it wasn’t nearly as much as we needed, and we probably didn’t need the chain saw. We needed the chisel." War against Ukraine Calkins helped the Renew Democracy Initiative to create fight4ukraine.com, a website that tracks the world's response to Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This initiative included banning the sale of software to Russia.