Chris Hulls

Early life and education

Hulls grew up in Point Reyes, a popular cape in northern California and began early as an entrepreneur. At the age of 12, he purchased suitcases full of African crafts while on a trip with his family to Kenya. He later sold the crafts when he returned to school. The following year, he used AOL classifieds to sell over $10,000 worth of Beanie Babies. Hulls attended Tomales High School where he graduated a year early, subsequently taking classes at the College of Marin.

Hulls joined the United States Air Force and served out of Qatar. He was a loadmaster on C-130 planes, conducting missions in Pakistan and Afghanistan for delivery of cargo. When his service time was up, Hulls enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley and also became a summer intern with Goldman Sachs. He turned down an offer to work for them full-time, instead enrolling in Harvard Business School and spending his last free summer traveling.

Career

Hulls decided to forgo completing his degree at Harvard to launch Life360, a mobile family networking application that allows families to see each others' locations through password protected networks. He came up with the idea during his time as an undergraduate. After seeing the United States Government's Ready.gov initiative that allowed people to find family members in a disaster, Hulls decided to create an easier platform for mobile users. Ready.gov used a system of pre-printed forms that families could print and fill out with a pen, while Hulls decided to make the app a location-based service that worked in real time. Hulls entered the Life360 app into the Android Developer Challenge and won over 3,000 other entries. He received a $275,000 award that he used to pay back prior investments from friends and family as well as hire developers for the app.

Outside of Life360, Hulls has been involved in public speaking and been quoted in numerous publications on various topics. He is also widely credited with coining the term App Store Optimization.