Dylan Diamond

He grew up in Westport, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, and later attended Staples High School there.⁠[1][2]

He recalled that he got his first Mac at about the age of eight and found the “View Source Code” option in a browser; around fourth grade, at about ten, he started a web development company that made static web pages for friends of his parents, among them doctors, lawyers and nonprofits; by eighth grade he had moved on to dynamic websites and mobile apps.⁠[3]

Staples High School’s student paper, Inklings News, wrote in 2020 that he was self-taught in web development, programmed his first website in fourth grade and built sites for friends and family throughout middle school.⁠[4]

He recalled in 2014: “I first started making apps in seventh grade when I got my first iPhone”; before that he had done web programming, and he learned to make apps mainly from the internet.⁠[5]

His first production app was MyMoonPhase, made in eighth grade for a science project; it shows the current phase of the moon with a description and photos. “We got an A+, so that was nice,” he said.⁠[5]

The Westport local news site 06880 writes that he made MyMoonPhase for a science assignment while at Coleytown and that it was downloaded about 3,000 times.⁠[6]

06880 wrote on March 7, 2014 that, as a freshman at Staples High School, he had developed MyHAC, a free iPhone and iPad app that gave students and parents easy access to grades, assignments and transcripts through the Home Access Center; within a few weeks of launch it had been downloaded about 600 times, on iOS only. 06880 also wrote that he was largely self-taught.⁠[6]

Inklings News wrote in December 2014 that MyHAC lets students view their current grades, grade point averages and class details for all four quarters.⁠[5]

Later articles give different figures for the app’s reach: 06880 wrote in April 2016 that myHAC gave students and parents nationwide access to schedules and grades and had been downloaded 85,000 times; 06880 wrote in September 2020 that at 15 he built an app that let classmates view their schedules and grades and later rolled it out nationally, with hundreds of thousands of downloads; and he himself said in 2020 that MyHAC had been scaled to thousands of high schools across the country, with more than half a million users.⁠[7][6][4]

In December 2014 his latest app was Inklings News, made for the school paper to deliver Staples news, with article categories shown on the left; it had taken him three weeks to make and was downloaded more than 115 times in its first day.⁠[5]

He said at the time: “There are a lot of frustrating times throughout the app making process when you get stuck on a problem,” and “It is gratifying to make something that can easily reach thousands of people through their devices”; he said he wanted to pursue “a creative path with technology, specifically app design or programming.”⁠[5]

ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry writes that in October 2015 he was a junior at Staples High School, which had about 1,800 students who swapped schedules through spreadsheets, group chats and posts, and that he built a web app for the school to show “where my friends were and what was going on in the community.”⁠[2]

In a 2024 interview he said that the schedule-sharing web app later gained calendar features for the school’s rotating schedule and was named iStaples, and that it went viral at Staples, with about 80% of the school’s 1,800 students using it daily. Built In NYC and The Daily Pennsylvanian also write that he built the first version as a junior.⁠[8][9][10]

Inklings News wrote in 2020 that his school-schedule apps evolved step by step, MyHAC becoming StaplesGotClass and then iStaples. A 2017 Inklings News article describes iStaples as an iPhone app in three parts: the schedule for any school day, a student’s full schedule, and classmates’ full schedules; his classmate Dylan Gleicher helped him build and refine it and says he was known at school as the “app guy.”⁠[4][11]

He recalled in 2024 that when some school administrators wanted to shut iStaples down, the then principal John Dodig and the teacher David Scrofani backed the app.⁠[6]

06880 wrote on April 20, 2016 that he, then a high school junior, had received an invitation to Facebook’s F8 conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco, with Facebook covering the $800 registration fee; on the conference floor he approached Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to tell her about his apps, spent time with the chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, sat next to the chief executive of Oculus Rift, and watched Mark ZuckerbergMark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, Chairman and CEO of Meta, and a co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. His work spans social networking, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry’s keynote from close up.⁠[7]

The post says that he discussed Facebook’s new Messenger bot, analytics and startup advice, and that attendees looked over his code and suggested improvements; attendees received free Oculus headsets, and he used his on the flight home. He was one of a couple of dozen high school students there, and afterwards he and two others visited the headquarters of Uber and of Apple in Cupertino. “Everyone there was super-passionate,” he said. “They really opened my eyes to new ideas.”⁠[7]

The same post lists his other apps: Ski With Friends, which helps skiers find companions on the slopes, and Saround, made with fellow Westporter Adam Goldberg, which lets users book services such as babysitters, yardwork and concert tickets by priority; his next project at the time was an app to speed up food purchases in school cafeterias.⁠[7]

He recalled that in 2015 his parents bought a Tesla Model S and he got his first Apple Watch, and that in his junior year of high school he built Tesla Toolbox, an Apple Watch app for Tesla owners, which went viral in the Tesla community after he released it on the App Store. He said the idea came when he got an Apple Watch and noticed that TeslaTeslaTesla is an American electric vehicle and energy company whose businesses span automobiles, solar energy, and battery energy storage. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, its shares are listed on Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA.Open the full entry had made nothing for the platform, after which he spent “hours in the passenger seat learning everything I could about the onboard computers.”⁠[3][12]

Inklings News wrote in December 2016 that Tesla Toolbox was developed by him and Neil Soni, a year below him, and entered the App Store in late September; it cost $5.99 and was a fully functional iOS app with a watch interface offering remote driving, climate control, battery settings, locking and lights, trip monitoring and a live view of the car’s location. It was his seventh app, had been updated three times and had more than 2,000 users. His AP Computer Science teacher was David Scrofani. Both he and Soni planned to study computer science in college.⁠[12]

Forbes describes the app as letting drivers control their cars from Apple Watches and share drive data, which he called “Strava for the Tesla community”; Forbes also places its development during his time at the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry, which differs from the school paper’s account and his own.⁠[2]

He recalled that he began working for Tesla in the last few months of his senior year of high school, as a software engineer on the Supercharger Analytics team, and was still there as a college sophomore. He said in 2024 that Tesla hired him first as an intern and then as a full-time software engineer. The episode description of Clock Speed with Shamus Madan says that he became Tesla’s youngest intern at 17; Forbes writes that Tesla discovered his app and hired him as its youngest full-time employee, and a press release published by Insight PartnersInsight PartnersInsight Partners is a venture capital and private equity firm founded in New York in 1995 by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock, investing in software and technology companies from early through late stages. As of December 31, 2025, its website reported over $90 billion in regulatory assets under management and investments in more than 900 companies.Open the full entry also calls him Tesla’s youngest full-time employee.⁠[3][8][13][2][14]

Accounts differ on how he combined the Tesla job with college: Forbes writes that he commuted weekly between Philadelphia and San Francisco; he said in 2024 that he was based in Philadelphia while at Penn and visited the team in San Francisco regularly, and that he made sacrifices in his demanding dual-degree program but learned more at Tesla; Inklings News wrote in 2020 that he moved to CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry and worked there for several years.⁠[2][8][4]

He graduated from Staples High School in 2017. Before leaving he handed the running of iStaples to Neal Soni and Jack Sharkey of the next class, who would maintain and update it. He said he hoped he had “made a positive impact on the Staples community through my various apps” and was very pleased by “the response and adoption throughout the school during my time here.” Sharkey said that he “is a great programmer.”⁠[2][11]

The article says that the science teacher David Scrofani taught him programming in depth over the years.⁠[11]

After high school he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to study engineering and business; The Daily Pennsylvanian described him in 2018 as a sophomore in the Wharton SchoolWharton SchoolThe Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania. Established through Joseph Wharton’s gift in 1881, it offers undergraduate, MBA, doctoral and executive education.Open the full entry and the engineering school, and Inklings News writes that he double-majored at Penn.⁠[2][10][4]

An interview published by the Wharton Global Youth Program describes him, then 20, as a Wharton School sophomore studying management and technology and engineering, the owner of Diamond Apps, LLC, with other education technology apps on the App Store and a new ed tech platform in the works; he describes himself as “an entrepreneur using computer science as a tool to reach people and make a difference.”⁠[3]

A profile of the alumnus Max Baron published by St. Paul’s School says that as a University of Pennsylvania sophomore Diamond showed his schedule app to his classmate Baron, who says he was “blown away by the engagement and potential to extend the product’s core utility”; after meeting in September 2018 the two began working on what would become Saturn, moved into an apartment together and set up four computers.⁠[15]

Forbes writes that Baron, a fellow Wharton student who ran a social media consultancy backed by Dr. Dre and Snapchat, contacted Diamond on LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry, and that Diamond showed him Saturn over coffee on Penn’s campus; Baron said its potential was “much higher” than anything he could find in a classroom or commercial setting. Forbes gives their titles as COO and CSO for Baron and CEO for Diamond. The press release published by Insight Partners says that Baron had worked in marketing and strategy at Beats by DreBeatsBeats is an audio brand founded by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, offering headphones, earphones and speakers. Apple acquired Beats Electronics and Beats Music in 2014.Open the full entry and T-MobileT-MobileT-Mobile (T-Mobile US, Inc.) is one of the major U.S. wireless carriers, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and Overland Park, Kansas, and controlled by Deutsche Telekom. Its predecessor was VoiceStream Wireless, founded in 1994; it listed on Nasdaq after combining with MetroPCS in 2013 and merged with Sprint in 2020.Open the full entry and led youth marketing at Havas.⁠[2][14]

Accounts of when they met differ: he said in 2024 that they met in 2017 while both were sophomores at Penn, while Built In NYC says they met as sophomores in 2019. Saturn’s founding year is also given two ways: TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry says it was founded in 2018, and the Insight Partners press release says the two founded it in 2019 as sophomores.⁠[8][9][16][14]

The Daily Pennsylvanian wrote on September 9, 2018 that after arriving at Penn he had spent four to five months, on and off, turning iStaples into UTime for Penn students: students enter their course numbers to see their class data from Penn InTouch and can view friends’ schedules, with the option of a private profile. UTime was beta-tested at the end of the previous spring semester and launched at the start of the fall semester, with 200 downloads in its first two days. He said he realized the app was needed on his first day of freshman year, when students were finding their classes with screenshots of their Penn InTouch schedules or crumpled paper.⁠[10]

He wished Penn InTouch had a “dynamic interface” and let students connect with friends and classmates; he was considering letting users add student club events to their schedules, making the app work on the web and Android, and integrating it with other schools’ systems, and was beta-testing at Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry with Neil Soni, a Yale freshman. Business development and marketing were handled by Greg Preiser, a Wharton sophomore.⁠[10]

He said in 2024 that they first tested the concept at a second school with a white-labeled app and half of that school joined within three hours; the app then spread to 17 schools, each with its own app, which were later consolidated into a single app, Saturn, named after the Roman god of time. The St. Paul’s School profile says that by January 2019 the pair had launched apps for 17 high schools in the Northeast and by April had consolidated them into a single app supporting more than 50 schools.⁠[8][15]

The article he and Baron wrote in 2023 says that in March 2019 Saturn consolidated 18 white-labeled school apps into one, the first school-specific app having been for Weston High School in Connecticut; at Darien High School about 25% of the student body joined within three hours of launch, and at Ridgefield about 15%.⁠[17]

General CatalystGeneral CatalystGeneral Catalyst (GC) is an investment firm founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, United States, created by Joel Cutler, David Fialkow and Bill Fitzgerald, that backs companies from the seed stage through growth.Open the full entry writes that it met the two in May 2019, when they were just over a year out of high school, Wharton sophomores who both held full-time jobs; they had noticed that it was easier to schedule a conference call with colleagues than dinner or drinks with friends. They skipped a Wharton exam to attend their first sit-down meeting with General Catalyst’s Denali Tietjen and the author, and General Catalyst went on to lead or co-lead Saturn’s early financing rounds.⁠[18]

He said in 2024 that when Saturn reached 50 schools the founders met investors in California and General Catalyst led the seed round; in 2019 Saturn raised a $9 million seed round in two stages from General Catalyst and Coatue. Forbes writes that the 2019 seed round of $9 million came from investors including TQ Ventures, General Catalyst and Ashton Kutcher and valued the pre-revenue company at $40 million.⁠[8][2]

Accounts differ on when the two left school: he said in 2024 that both took a leave of absence and never went back; the Insight Partners press release says they left the university in 2019 to work on Saturn full time, and the St. Paul’s School profile also says they left Wharton in 2019; Forbes and Built In NYC say they dropped out after he won the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry in 2020. 06880 wrote in November 2024 that he earned a dual degree in computer science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and in October 2026 that he left Penn without finishing in order to pursue his business.⁠[8][14][15][2][9][19][6]

He recalled in 2024 that during the COVID-19 pandemic Saturn’s user base dropped to “zero.”⁠[6]

06880 wrote in September 2020 that he and his Wharton classmate Max Baron were concentrating on the calendar app Saturn, that Inc. described their aim as “to own the time layer of the internet,” and that an Inc. podcast discussed the co-founders’ early work experience at Tesla and Havas.⁠[6]

Inklings News wrote on December 23, 2020 that he, then 22, had been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 for developing Saturn; the St. Paul’s School profile says that he and Baron were both named to the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Education list, and the Insight Partners press release says that both were named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2020.⁠[4][15][14]

The article says that Saturn had by then expanded to hundreds of schools, had a team in New York, was working with SnapchatSnapchatA visual messaging and social app developed by Snap Inc., launched in 2011, with photo and video messaging, Stories, augmented-reality Lenses, Snap Map and Spotlight.Open the full entry to make the app more social and relied on student ambassadors at each school who relayed schedule changes and glitches; Staples High School had switched to Saturn that year. He credited Staples’ computer science program and its accepting, competitive environment, said that “Saturn has been by far the highlight [of my career],” and said his goal was to bring Saturn to every high school and college in the country and the world.⁠[4]

On December 30, 2020 the Thiel Foundation named the 24 members of the 2020 class of Thiel Fellows; he is item 7 of the list, with New York, NY, as his listed location. The announcement describes his project as Saturn, an app that builds community through the calendar, focusing on helping high schoolers make plans and share schedules with friends. It also states that the Thiel Fellowship, launched in 2011, encourages talented young people to pursue big ideas and start companies instead of attending college, and that during the two-year program fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the Thiel Foundation’s network of technology founders, investors and scientists.⁠[20]

Forbes, Forbes JAPAN and Built In NYC all write that he won a Thiel Fellowship in 2020, and the Insight Partners press release calls him a 2020 Thiel Fellow.⁠[2][21][9][14]

He and Baron wrote in their 2023 article that after Saturn launched a waitlist in July 2021, more than 100,000 students from 10,000 schools joined within 90 days; the student ambassadors, who had supplied schedule data and seeded schools, were later replaced by product features, with data gathered through the waitlist and calendar updates crowdsourced.⁠[17]

On August 10, 2021 Forbes wrote that Saturn had raised a further $35 million, bringing its total funding to $44 million, in a round led by General Catalyst, Insight Partners and Coatue with participation from Bezos ExpeditionsBezos ExpeditionsBezos Expeditions is Jeff Bezos’s personal investment platform, whose public portfolio spans the internet, enterprise software, life sciences, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Its investment activity is separate from Amazon’s corporate investments, and disclosed holdings include Business Insider, Skild AI, and Generalist.Open the full entry, Marc BenioffMarc BenioffMarc Benioff is a technology entrepreneur and philanthropist who is co-founder, Chair, and CEO of Salesforce, as well as owner and co-chair of TIME. He worked at Oracle early in his career, co-founded Salesforce in 1999, championed cloud-based customer relationship management and the subscription model for enterprise software, and advocated for companies to take part in community philanthropy. In recent years, he has led the company toward AI agents and enterprise data platforms.Open the full entry, Dara Khosrowshahi, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Inspired Capital, Mike Vernal, TQ Ventures, SV AngelSV AngelSV Angel is a San Francisco venture capital firm cofounded in 2009 by angel investor Ron Conway and former Google executive David Lee. It typically writes small follow-on checks in seed rounds and has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox; in 2018 it said it would no longer raise new funds from outside investors, and from 2022 it set up growth funds.Open the full entry, Dick CostoloDick CostoloDick Costolo is an entrepreneur and investor who was chief executive officer of Twitter from 2010 to 2015, earlier co-founded the feed service FeedBurner, and is a co-managing partner of the venture firm 01 Advisors.Open the full entry and Adam Bain’s 01 Advisors, Robert Downey Jr., Elad GilElad GilElad Gil is an entrepreneur, investor and author of High Growth Handbook. He co-founded Mixer Labs and Color, worked at Google and Twitter, runs the multistage investment firm Gil & Co, and co-hosts the No Priors podcast with Sarah Guo.Open the full entry, Jerry Murdock, Hadi Partovi and Dylan FieldDylan FieldDylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma and an angel investor. He studied computer science and mathematics at Brown University, explored browser-based design tools with Evan Wallace, and founded Figma in 2012 with support from the Thiel Fellowship. His personal history also includes collecting digital art and investing in companies such as Mercury and Socket.Open the full entry. He referred to the round in 2024 as a $35 million Series A.⁠[2][8]

A press release published by Insight Partners the same day says Saturn raised more than $44 million, lists WndrCo and Neo among the investors and identifies Mike Vernal as being from Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry; it says Saturn is based in New York and will use the funds to grow its engineering and product teams, that it had partnered with Snap, with founding members of Snap’s product, design, engineering and recruiting teams serving as advisors, and that more than half of its users were active daily. The release says Diamond had previously built a best-selling paid education app and quotes him: “To build a product that truly resonates with this generation, you have to start with proximity to the demographic,” describing Saturn as “reinventing the way that people make plans with friends.” General Catalyst’s article of August 11 puts Saturn’s total funding at nearly $50 million.⁠[14][18]

Forbes writes that Jerry Murdock, who led the round as an individual, said that with high engagement and utility “there’s an implied sense that monetization will be there when you need to get there,” and that Alexa von Tobel, founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital, called Diamond “a prodigy in many ways.” Built In NYC writes that Jerry Murdock, a co-founder of Insight Partners, said Gen Z founders were better placed to understand the needs of today’s high school students.⁠[2][9]

Forbes writes that Saturn was then based in SoHo, New York, with 30 employees, and planned to hire for 13 roles with the new money; it did not disclose user numbers, but a few hundred schools used it to manage social and academic calendars, message students and track homework; it recruited unpaid student ambassadors to make the app feel student-run; and it had no revenue model and no plans yet to go beyond high schools, Baron saying monetization “is not our immediate priority at the moment.” Diamond said the goal was to “scale flawlessly to thousands of schools,” adding, “There’s a lot of work ahead, but we’re excited about where we are.” Built In NYC writes that Saturn had about a dozen open tech positions and was preparing a national expansion in time for the fall 2021 school year.⁠[2][9]

General Catalyst’s article says the founders are driven by a personal obligation to their peers, compares their background to that of Snap’s Evan and Bobby, and says Saturn’s engagement recalled General Catalyst’s investments in Discord and Sleeper, with engagement rising markedly after features such as chat were added. It also says Denali Tietjen had joined Saturn from General Catalyst almost two years earlier.⁠[18]

On December 5, 2023 Lenny’s Newsletter published an article by him and Baron, “Lessons on building a viral consumer app: The story of Saturn.” It describes Saturn as “a social network built around the calendar” that started in high schools and had millions of students across nearly 20,000 schools without a single school partnership; in mid-August 2023 it reached No. 4 overall and No. 2 in Social Networking on the Apple App Store; its new-user 30-day retention was in the mid-30s percent, against a range of 28% to 40% that the article gives for Snap, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook.⁠[17]

The lessons the article draws include using single-player value as a wedge — “Look for (and double down on) a single-player use case to increase retention” — making each school feel the product was built for it and scaling that personalization rather than making the product generic, and accepting unscalable early tactics such as student ambassadors. The investors it lists include General Catalyst, Insight, Coatue and Dick Costolo and Adam Bain’s 01 Advisors, as well as Marc Benioff, Dara Khosrowshahi, Ashton Kutcher, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Vernal, Bezos Expeditions, Elad Gil and Dylan Field.⁠[17]

On May 29, 2024 Entrepreneur published a question-and-answer interview with him. He said Saturn then supported more than 19,000 schools and had been used by millions of students in the most recent school year; the company had moved from a utility app toward a social product that connects students with peers, plans and local events; bespoke calendars for each school drove retention, and because schedule data was crowdsourced it required dense participation at each school; collecting and maintaining data for new schools with unique, frequently changing calendars was hard and took years of patience from the team and investors.⁠[8]

His advice was to build products that solve problems you understand personally; he said the team had also hired young college students and recent graduates who understood its user base.⁠[8]

On June 25, 2024 the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) announced Saturn as its newest member company, stating that Saturn had helped millions of students at nearly 20,000 U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry high schools during the past school year. In the announcement he said: “Our goal is to empower young people by giving them the tools to be the most productive version of themselves,” a goal that included “promoting online civility from the get-go.”⁠[22]

On June 27, 2024 he published an article in Fast Company arguing that the time-management demands of high school, from rotating class schedules to extracurriculars, resemble those of a first job, and offering new graduates five pieces of advice: build self-discipline, protect free time deliberately, handle interruptions (for instance by prioritizing with the Eisenhower Matrix and setting fixed times for email), choose tools carefully, and keep using the strategies that worked in school. He writes that he had run Saturn for about five years and dropped out of college to work on it full time, that he wished he had been more disciplined as a student about separating free time from work time, and that he now sets goals for his free time and handles email at the start and end of each day.⁠[23]

On July 19, 2024 he published an op-ed in FORTUNE arguing that the Los Angeles Unified School District’s ban on student phones throughout the day, including lunch and breaks, was well-intentioned but did not address how technology fits into modern education and could backfire; he proposed teaching students to use phones productively, offering digital literacy and safe social media lessons, and giving parents resources on built-in tools such as AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry’s Screen Time and Android’s Digital Wellbeing, comparing this with schools’ early handling of the internet through filters and lessons in responsible use rather than bans.⁠[24]

On August 20, 2024 the podcast Clock Speed with Shamus Madan released episode 129, “The Secret Behind Creating Viral Apps & Becoming The Youngest Intern at Tesla,” running 42 minutes. Its description and chapter list show that it covered his engineering background and early projects, the creation and adoption of Saturn, balancing Tesla work with app development, meeting his co-founder Max Baron, Saturn’s growth and the decision to go full time, growth strategies and challenges, his critique of social media models and Saturn’s monetization, and his lessons and reflections on past failures.⁠[13]

06880 writes that he was one of four panelists at Startup Westport’s Young Innovators Forum on November 25, 2024, moderated by Molly O’Shea; it describes him as CEO of Saturn Technologies overseeing more than 100 employees at its New York headquarters, with Saturn in use at 22,000 schools. He said: “The mentorship I received, and the encouragement to build products that served the community, were hugely motivating,” and “The opportunity cost in high school and college is so low.”⁠[19][6]

06880 called him the star of that panel on February 22, 2025: “The star of the star-studded panel was Dylan Diamond.”⁠[6]

On February 21, 2025 Molly O’Shea’s Sourcery with Molly O'SheaSourcery (Podcast)Sourcery is a technology and investing media outlet founded and hosted by Molly O’Shea. It began as a weekly newsletter and expanded into podcast and video interviews with investors, CEOs and founders, focusing on venture capital, private markets and startups.Open the full entry published an interview with him. She writes that she and he both attended Staples High School and that he had joined other Staples alumni on a November panel at a Startup Westport event. The episode page says that Saturn then had millions of users across 18,000 schools, with more than 100,000 new users a day at the back-to-school peak, each user inviting four to five friends on average, about 50% of monthly active users active daily, 30-day retention well above 30% for new users and near 70% for existing users, and in many cases more than 90% of new users returning each year; penetration at some high schools had risen from 30% to 80–90%; it had ranked No. 2 overall and No. 1 in Productivity on the App Store during the summer back-to-school season and had reached No. 1 in the App Store; it had raised $68 million in total, with NEO among the investors, Nikita BierNikita BierNikita Bier is an American entrepreneur and product manager known for developing tbh and Gas, anonymous compliment-polling apps for teenagers, which were acquired by Facebook, Inc. (now Meta) and Discord in 2017 and 2023, respectively. He announced on June 30, 2025, that he had become head of product at the social media platform X, stepped down in August 2026, and said in October of that year that he had officially left X.Open the full entry as a viral-app adviser and Denali Tietjen as director of product.⁠[1]

The page highlights one remark of his: “We even had Bieber tweet out the product once and the retention was not strong.”⁠[1]

On June 20, 2025 Engadget and TechCrunch wrote that Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, had acquired Saturn on undisclosed terms; Snap confirmed the deal to both outlets, said that Saturn would continue to operate as a standalone app, and said that almost the entire Saturn team, just under 30 full-time employees, was joining Snap. Engadget names Saturn’s founders as Dylan Diamond, its CEO, and Max Baron, its COO. Snap said that about 80% of U.S. high schoolers attend schools that support Saturn and that it would bring Saturn’s calendaring expertise into Snapchat in innovative ways.⁠[25][16]

06880 wrote on July 16, 2025 that the company, which had started at Staples High School, had been acquired by Snap and that most of Saturn’s 30 full-time employees would join their new owner.⁠[6]

06880 wrote on October 22, 2026 that The Dealroom, an online business site, had just posted an interview with him in which he talks about his career, his coding and his time at the University of Pennsylvania; 06880 described him as “still only in his mid-20s.”⁠[6]

Forbes writes that high schoolers use Saturn to manage their calendars, learn about community events, chat with friends and see classmates’ real-time whereabouts. Engadget writes that Saturn’s design resembles Snapchat’s and that it supports block schedules, rotating calendars and extracurricular activities, with college features that are less widely used; TechCrunch writes that users can share not only classes but also practices, rehearsals, meetings and games.⁠[2][25][16]

The St. Paul’s School profile says Saturn’s calendars are specific to each school and cannot be viewed by students at other schools or by teachers and administrators; the FOSI announcement says Saturn uses multi-layered verification to connect users to their school community, maintains Community Guidelines, monitors content and user reports, and may report inappropriate content to the school or to law enforcement.⁠[15][22]

The St. Paul’s School profile says that Saturn, based in Manhattan with more than 40 employees, had been used by 60,000 students at 100 schools and later supported more than 1,000 high schools across the U.S. The Sourcery with Molly O'Shea episode page says Saturn’s features include AI-based schedule uploads from images, crowdsourced updates and a conversational planner, and that it uses an embedded advertising model with brands such as Nike and Uber.⁠[15][1]

06880 writes that in high school he was on the cross-country, track and ski teams, worked on lighting for the Staples Players’ production of Thoroughly Modern Millie and ran the website of the school paper, Inklings; it also writes that his running skills helped him get one of the best seats for Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at F8.⁠[6][7]

Tesla: Official website: https://www.tesla.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[26]

Saturn: Official website: https://joinsaturn.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[28]