anmol at mit dot edu
Early-Stage Startup Experience
Co-Founder, SocialSense Labs Inc.
SocialSense aims to commercialize my PhD research, in the form for a 'socially-aware' stack for iPhones and Android. The initial idea was awarded second-place in the MIT 100k Mobile track, and with some help from my co-founder Phil Davis is on its way to becoming a seed-funded company.
SmartDialer (for Android)
Our entry for the Andorid v2 Challenge, with my officemates Wen Dong and Wei Pan. This application replaces the native phone addressbook with a predicted speed-dial list. SmartDialer works by building a bootstrapped model of the user's past behavior by factoring temporal and location data. Based on a related research paper, submitted to ICMI.
Technical Program Manager, Windows Mobile v1 Client Team (past)
Not a real startup, but listed here because I learnt extensively about the process of shipping production software. I was a technical program manager for a v1 incubation client team that went from prototype stage to beta-2 release during my employment period. My responsibilties included functional specs, technical design, point of contact with 9 different internal teams, and getting product buy-in from device OEM partners in Korea, Taiwan, Japan and North America. Image (c) Microsoft corp.
SpotMedia Networks (past)
This startup idea that came out of an entrepreneurship class, with my excellent co-conspirators Randy Zadra and Vishal Sehgal, both of whom later took their deal-making skills to become CEOs of other companies. Our plan was to use bluetooth p2p networking as a low-cost alternative for 3G media distribution in emerging markets. We even had a booth at 3GSM in Barcelona that year. After much deliberation, we decided not pursue this, and today there are two VC-funded companies in India implementing the same idea.
My first foray into entrepreneurship at MIT. We won the MIT 1k competition and were a semi-finalist in the 50k. The core idea was based on my Master's research, around predicting user engagment and vocal stress for market research and call center applications. Dr. Carl Marci, my collaborator on this idea, now runs a successful consulting business along similar lines called Innerscope Research.