Niniane Wang

Work Experience

2014 - present, Founder & CEO, Evertoon.

Founded a startup that has built technology for a social video-making community. Evertoon's iPhone and Android apps allow users to create 3-D avatars from selfie photos and make animated characters and videos to share with others. The app has been used to make 340,000 avatars and over 100,000 videos.
Managed the team of artists, engineers, and consultants in marketing and design.
Oversaw the building of server-side systems for user accounts, community, and abuse prevention, and the creation of the client-side apps using Unity3D.
Negotiated a low-six-figure contract to license our technology to a mobile company.
Raised $1.765M from Greylock, Arena, Amino Capital, and notable angels including Ali Rosenthal, Greg Badros, Ellen Pao, and Charlie Cheever.

2017 - present, Advisor to VC Fund, Basis Set Ventures.

Advised portfolio startups of a $136M AI-focused venture fund regarding technical decisions and engineering leadership.
Performed due diligence to assess startups' technology and team.

2010 - 2014, CTO, Minted.

Oversaw all software development (community, commerce, backend), dev ops, IT, and analytics.
Recruited the company's engineering department from the ground up into a team of 40 people. Recruited and managed 4 engineering directors.
Created technical ladder for compensation and promotions. Led the engineering directors to perform career management for technical employees.
Directed the development of anti-cheating algorithms to prevent abuse amongst community members.
Helped grow the company's revenues by 20x to tens of millions in annual revenue.
Directed the migration of the server platform to a mixture of Rackspace and AWS.
Helped raise $46M from investors, including series B from Benchmark and series C from TCV.
Set strategy, budget, and organizational chart for technology department, and ensured that it enabled other departments including marketing and operations.

2010 - present, Advisor to Various Startups, including Rent the Runway, MyTime, and Tawkify.

Advised a number of startups on engineering leadership, recruiting, and technical infrastructure.

2010, Cofounder, Sunfire Offices

Started and managed an organization for 30+ startups that was sponsored by top venture capitalists including Sequoia, Benchmark, and Kleiner Perkins. Evaluated startups for membership. Mentored member companies on product development and fundraising.

2003 - 2008, Engineering Manager, Google

Founder, Google Lively

Founded a product for avatar chat and in-browser 3-D graphical social experiences.
Responsible for all parts of the product, including engineering, marketing, legal, and community management.
Co-inventor on 5 patents.

Lead, Gmail Ads Engineering

Led a team of engineers to improve Gmail revenue via enhancements in machine learning, text processing, and user interface improvements.
Increased per-user revenue by 140% via fourteen improvements, making Gmail break-even during 2006 in the US market.
Co-inventor on 3 patents.

Cofounder, Google Desktop Search

Cofounded Desktop Search from product inception through public launch. Desktop was used by 75 million weekly active users.
Implemented key components including the search query system, instant messenger capture, snippets, and the sidebar.
Co-inventor on 19 patents.
Won a Google Founder's Award, the highest internal award.

Throughout Google experience

Served for 5 years on the Hiring Committee, which makes offer decisions on candidates.
Helped Google set up processes for client-side development, including Windows configuration testing and performance analysis.
Built the client-engineer recruiting process, including job description, interview questions, training interviewers, and determining job criteria.
Interviewed 300+ engineering candidates. Screened hundreds of resumes.
Launched Google Movie Showtimes as a 20% project.

1998 - 2003, Engineering Manager, Microsoft

Engineering Manager, Microsoft Flight Simulator FX and UI

Managed the FX and UI engineering teams through shipping Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight, focusing on maintaining quality while hitting deadlines.
Gave career guidance to engineers. Did performance evaluations and determined compensation.
Improved performance, doubling framerates and virtually eliminating stutters.
Developed a technology for real-time cloud rendering, which I presented at SIGGRAPH and GDC, and published in Journal of Graphics Tools.
Interviewed 100+ engineering candidates.

Software Engineer, Microsoft Sports and Racing Games

Implemented various areas of a racing game for PC and Xbox, including UI, art pipeline, and input system.

M.S., Computer Science, University of Washington, 2001. GPA 3.9. (While working fulltime at Microsoft.)
B.S., Computer Science, California Institute of Technology, 1998. GPA 3.8. (Graduated at age 18.)

Wang, N., Wade, B. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow (and Rain). Game Programming Gems 5, Charles River Media. 2005.
Wang, N. Realistic and Fast Cloud Rendering, Journal of Graphics Tools. 2004.
Wang, N. Let There Be Clouds, Game Developers Magazine. January 2004.
Ishii, H., Page, S., Wang, N. 1999. A Day at the Beach: Human Agents Self-Organizing on the Sand Pile. Advances in Complex Systems. Vol 2, Issue 1. p 37 - 64.