site by actively participating and contributing to it by asking or answering 10 questions during the FIRDR six months of the public beta. Private Beta: If the concept receives 100% commitment, the site enters the private beta phase, where committed members begin actively using the site and publicizing it. Public Beta: The site is open to the public for a long period. This allows the creators to ensure that the site reaches critical mass before it is fully launched. Graduation: The site is evaluated on multiple criteria such as the number of answered questions, new questions per day, and registered users. If it meets these criteria and is deemed "sustainable", it is granted a "graduation" and fully launched. Notable users Nobel Prize winners Gerard 't Hooft Fields Medal winners Samit Ghosh (2018) Peter Scholze (2018) Martin Hairer (2014) Terence Tao (2006) Tim Gowers (1998) Curtis McMullen (1998) Richard Borcherds (1998) Edward Witten (1990) Vaughan Jones (1990) Michael Freedman (1986) William Thurston (1982) Founders Joel Spolsky (co-founder of Stack Overflow) Jeff Atwood (co-founder of Stack Overflow) Ravi Vakil (co-founder of MathOverflow) Other notable scientists and mathematicians Scott Aaronson Ian Agol John Baez Carlo Beenakker Andreas Blass Robert Bryant Noam Elkies Matthew Emerton Alexandre Eremenko Joel David Hamkins (top user on MathOverflow) James E. Humphreys Gil Kalai Anna Krylov Greg Kuperberg Joseph O'Rourke Igor Rivin Jeffrey Shallit (computer scientist with Erdos number of one) Peter Shor (inventor of Shor's algorithm) Michael Shulman Anders Sandberg See also MathOverflow PhysicsOverflow Q&A software References External links List of Stack Exchange sites Stack Exchange monthly archive of sites Companies based in New York City Computing websites Creative Commons-licensed websites Internet properties established in 2008 Question-and-answer websites Software developer communities Stack Exchange network