Shensi Ding

Shensi Ding is co-founder and CEO of Merge, which gives software companies one API for adding integrations. She started it with Gil, whom she met freshman year at Columbia University, she wrote on Merge's blog.

Hiring Integration Engineers at Expanse

After college both ended up at startups in San Francisco, California. As chief of staff at Expanse, Ding watched integrations come up in executive meetings and sales calls until the company hired a full team of engineers just for them. At Jumpstart, where Gil was head of engineering, customers kept asking for integrations with their applicant tracking systems.

A Sweetgreen Dinner

At one of their weekly Sweetgreen dinners in San Francisco, Ding saw that Gil "looked terrible from working so much on these integrations." Comparing notes, they found they had the same problem, and Merge grew out of it.