Chaki develops and ships products that serve millions, driven by good user-centered design and quant/qual analytics practices. Currently, he is Head of Marketplace at startup Hopps.io, which matches experts (paid by minutes) to provide live support to users of popular SaaS apps.  Previously, he was Chief Product Officer at Odin (Luminopia), Inc., a startup addressing the mental wellness market via science-based video content and personalizations. 5 years after the iPhone came out, he joined Viacom as the SVP Product: led MTV + VH1 and other brands to lauch 15 industry-first streaming apps on  in just 2 years, with combined 500M+ video streams per year and helped increased revenues 2.5x. He also led redesigns of  VMA + MTV News with data science + growth hacking: both cementing their top spots among entertainment properties (e.g., 40M uniques). Chaki was then appointed by Viacom CXOs to be the first GM Innovations and founded two new business units, including Viacom NEXT - an VR + AR studio that shipped over 10 projects (on Steam + iOS stores, premiered at Sundance,  SXSW,  the Obama White House and won Grand Prix at Cannes Lions and Webby) in just over a year and a half. Right out of college, Chaki co-founded a 65-people eLearning company, Interactive Constructs, Inc., that powered top educational products such as Read 180 for publishers such as Scholastic + Harcourt via multi-million dollar licensing deals. He started his career in college as a senior software engineer for Yoyodyne Entertainment, the first permission marketing company acquired by Yahoo! In parallel to his corporate life, Chaki worked on computing research by designing distributed systems (sensor networks + cloud / grid networks) and resource allocation algorithms (mechanism design and virtual currencies) at Harvard (PhD + SM in Computer Science, advised by Prof. Margo Seltzer and Prof. David Parkes) and building tangible + augmented interfaces at MIT Media Lab. He also holds an MBA from MIT Sloan and a BS (Computer Science) from Northeastern. He still codes often to keep up with the latest and greatest.

Entrepreneur-in-Residence | Sponsor | Advisor recent/ex: MIT Martin Trust Center | Harvard iLab | NYC Media Lab | | MIT CSAIL | Columbia Tech Ventures | TribalScale | Spatial.is

Academic Publications and Projects
PhD Thesis: Online Mechanism and Virtual Currency Design

Speaker Decks

Some Talks on YouTube
Exploring Future Reality | Another One | AR in Action | Mayo Clinic Transform 
 
Some Press Coverage
AdWeek | Rolling Stone | VR Focus

Currently Learning: Deep Learning
Udacity AI Nanodegree |MIT Social Data and Networks | Stanford d.School Executive Bootcamp | Cooper Visual Interface Design 
Fun Fact: I am lucky to have taken classes taught by many great academics including: Tim Berners-Lee | Al Roth | Robert Merton | David Clark | Nancy Lynch

Find me next at: TBD past events (* speaker): ACM SATIS Summer School on Advanced Topics in Systems | ODSC East | MIT Biz of Blockchain | _Underscore.vc Blockchain | MIT Bitcoin Expo| AI & Future of Work (MIT) | TakeOver VR/AR Panel* | AWE Expo | LDV Vision | Media Summit NYC* | AR in Action* | Exploring Future Reality*

Connect
    | |   | first.last @ gmail

Inspirations
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt