Work Experience
Katana
Remote
CEO / Founder
2024 - Present
AI tool that auto-edits podcasts. Katana is profitable but not the slam-dunk I thought it would be. Using my infinite runway to explore & iterate.
Hopin Acquired
Remote
Head of AI
2021 - 2024
I led the AI team at Hopin, building features like AI Upscaling, Touch Up and AI Clips in Streamyard, Hopin's livestreaming product. I did both product (talking to customers, strategy, project management) and engineering (training AI models, prototyping features). Left when the founders left, when Hopin was acquired by a Private Equity firm in 2024.
Vectorly Acquired
San Francisco
CEO / Co-Founder
2018 - 2021
We developed and patented a novel video-compression technology called "Video Vectorization" which could compress animated & e-learning video by 10x (compared to h264) while improving video quality. We found it difficult to commercialize our new video codec and pivoted to AI Media Processing (e.g. AI Upscaling, Noise Filtering) in 2020.
Our AI Media Processing SDK was 10x more efficient than anything else available at the time, and was used in production by a number of billion-dollar companies, including Hopin, Fuze, Airmeet and Hubilo. In late 2021, we sold Vectorly to Hopin, our largest customer.
dot Learn Acquired
Lagos, Nigeria
CEO / Co-Founder
2016 - 2018
After graduating MIT, I started dot Learn as a social-impact venture, building an e-learning app with affordable, data-light video-learning courses which helped 50k+ students in West Africa study for their college entrance exams.
After failing to monetize, we rebranded the company to "Vectorly" in 2018 and focused on commercializing a proprietary video-compression algorithm "Video Vectorization" we had built internally.
Education
Masters in Business Administration
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2014 - 2016
Entrepreneurship Specialization, Legatum Fellow (2014-2015) and MIT Delta V (2016). Electives focused on startups and venture, with most free time spent working on dot Learn.
MSc Mechanical Engineering
Vanderbilt University
2010 - 2012
MS Portion of MS/PhD program in Robotics. My master's thesis focused on AI algorithms for surgical robots to navigate autonomously in the human body using force sensors.
BSc in Mechanical Engineering
Columbia University
2006 - 2010
Spent 3 semesters of research focused on Robotics & AI at the Robotics Lab
Projects
Katana
Tool that auto-edits video podcasts. Trained custom multi-modal LLM on 1000 podcasts for the most common edits (filler words, out takes, clips). Special focus on Zoom recordings
WebCodecsFundamentals
Digital textbook on WebCodecs, referenced by MDN, Chrome Developer Blog and CanIUse. Includes codec support table indicating WebCodecs support for 1087 codec variations across 1M+ real devices.
Free AI Video Upscaler
A free tool to upscale videos in the browser, which unexpectedly achieved product market fit, growing to 250,000 monthly active users without marketing
WebSR
An open source library for running real-time AI Upscaling networks on video in the browser
Background Segmentation SDK
SDK for running real-time background segmentation in the browser. Closed source / acquired by Hopin.
Video Vectorization
Video Compression technology that we patented and then open sourced
dot Learn
E-learning app to help West African students pass college entrance exams
Get in Touch
I'm currently busy trying to build my startup.
If you're building with video on the web, checkout WebCodecsFundamentals
If you need to upscale a video, check out Free AI Video Upscaler
If you're thinking of doing a podcast, checkout Katana.
If it's about anything else, drop me a line at sam@katana.video