Timothy Taeil Hwang (born February 20, 1992) is an American businessman, the current co-founder and CEO of FiscalNote, a global software, data, and media company.
In early 2013, as Hwang was finishing his degree at Princeton,[9] he launched FiscalNote along with two friends from high school, Gerald Yao and Jonathan Chen.[10] Hwang deferred his attendance at Harvard Business School to start the company[11] while Yao took a leave of absence from Emory University. At the time, FiscalNote began its service as a state legislative tracking service.[3] Hwang, Yao, and Chen, bootstrapped the business with several thousand dollars and incorporated FiscalNote in June 2013.[12]
FiscalNote soon moved the company to Washington, D.C., and raised several rounds of venture capital. The firm has grown to become one of the largest software employers in the District of Columbia. In 2017, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a major job training program and economic development package alongside Hwang, pioneering a new model for technology development in the city.[13][14][15] Hwang was the protagonist of a Columbia Business School case study in Fall 2015,[16] a 2016-hour-long Korean Broadcasting System Documentary (Sympathy: Tim Hwang at the Center of Korea's Attention),[17] and a South Korean biography "24 Year Old Tim Hwang: The CEO that the World is Paying Attention To."[18] Hwang has been widely criticized for making critical comments in the South Korean media about the health of the Korean economy, stating that "the Korean economy is like a patient with crutches."[19]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hwang fired 30 staff from the CQ Roll Call newsroom, with one source telling AdWeek that the layoffs included the entire team of investigative reporters, and all but one staff member from the print magazine team.[20] A month earlier, Hwang had told a reporter with Washington Business Journal that Roll Call was "on track to bring in $100 million in 2020 revenue and turn a profit.”[21]
^"'다큐공감' 24살 한국청년 황태일, LTE급 추진력" ['Documentary' 24-year-old Korean young man Hwang Tae-il, LTE-level momentum]. polinews.co.kr (in Korean). March 12, 2016.
^"24세 황태일 – 그는 왜 세계가 주목하는 한국 청년 CEO인가?" [24-year-old Hwang Tae-il – Why is he a young Korean CEO that the world is paying attention to?]. kyobobook.co.kr (in Korean). September 5, 2016.
^""제조업 강하지만 미래산업 약한 한국은 목발 짚은 환자"" ["Korea is strong in manufacturing but weak in future industries, a patient on crutches"]. hankyung.com (in Korean). November 1, 2017. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019.