One-liner
AI Developer who has run companies, can be a one-man tech team (AI + full stack web + basic iOS apps), and has a fairly good network in the media and think-tank communities
Key past achievements
- Popper.ai [Jan - Jun 2020]: Created a news article automation service and sold it to large media companies in India. 120M+ unique IPs accessed our content. Clients: Times of India, Hindustan Times
- Loki.ai [Sep 2017 - Present]: Created a general-purpose data and AI products company. Scaled it from $0-$180k in annual revenue as a solo-founder and only full-time employee. Sold products from as low as S$200/month to as high as S$80,000/year. Clients: Times of India, NUS ISAS, Essel Group, a [confidential] government department, Brookings Institution
- Deepo.io [May - Dec 2015]: Led Product and Data-Science at a startup in Singapore. Created a Google Analytics + Outbrain + Optimizely product. Could've gone somewhere, but I left after becoming aware of the fundraising situation of the company (investors already had 70% of the company for <$3M raised). Clients: Singapore Press Holdings, Khaleej Times, National Bookstore (Philippines), Carro
Operating Principles
Idea for this was from Ray Dalio's Principles. Click on the arrow for a full list:
- Always add more value than you extract: Never indulge in rent-seeking behaviour, and always add more value than you extract from the friends, colleagues, and partners you spend time with
- Prioritize long-term sustainability, not short-term cash grabs: Always prioritize what is important for the long-term, instead of the flavor of the month
- Have Fun: If you wake up not looking forward to your day for too many days in a row, it’s time to hit the reset button on whatever it is you are doing. This applies to work, relationships, and side-projects
- Spend your time doing things that are meaningful: You’ve hated yourself when you’ve been doing mundane, run-of-the-mill things that a generic smart person can do. Spend your time and energies on things that have a massive impact and that you are uniquely positioned to do
- Do not let success in any of work, play, or relationships be an excuse for failure in another area: There is little point in being extremely productive at work, but having a miserable personal life – you will burn out quickly and feel like shit in the long term. Conversely, there is little point in having what seems like a great personal life, but not progressing much in your creative and technical endeavours – you will become antsy after a while.
Things I've built
Automated video creation (pre-alpha version) (2020)
Every single thing in this video was automatically generated (the voiceover, the text, the graphs, the actual content). Still a very, very early version with a lot of things to improve
Popper.ai: automated reports with data viz and real-time scraping (2020)
Sample reports are at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LXsLtqHGyPHFOTIccW0zWE1HL2-IlCBujgXZNv5vqQY/edit
HWZ Trends: a "Google Trends" like interface for Forums, with a focus on keywords (2018)
Deck at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1henc07H78WXqTuWyMa_OjKqBdneCyiiBjp-jVZLeZa4/edit?usp=sharing. Screenshots below:
Personalization and recommendations infrastructure (2017)
More on this is at https://loki.ai/case-studies/personalization.pdf
Analytics infrastructure (2016)
More on this is at http://loki.ai/case-studies/own-platform-analytics.pdf
Adaptive learning enabled ed-tech platform (Quiztra, 2014-2015)
Did this while in and right after college. Started this with my friend Arjun, then took over as a solo founder.
Market validation deck (created in April 2014)
Sales deck (created in September 2014)