Chirag M.
5.0
YC Founder | Ex-Meta, Airbnb | Helpful for tech, startup and Intl.
Studied at Chicago Booth
Works at Blaze AI
Admissions Committee Experience
Available tomorrow at 8:30 PM UTC
Usually responds within 15 hours
Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.
Chirag’s MBA Qualifications
20+ people coached for MBA
Chirag has helped clients get into these schools:
Welcome to my profile! I'm Chirag Mahapatra, a Co-Founder at Blaze AI (YC W22) and an experienced coach in the for graduate programs including MBA, Masters and PhD. I have a background in data and AI, in companies such as Meta, Amazon and Airbnb. I can bring a unique perspective to the admissions process for those who are coming from an international background, tech background or looking to break into tech or startup. I have successfully coached a number of individuals of diverse backgrounds, helping them gain admission to top programs of their choice. My expertise lies in building application strategies, creating coherent career narratives, essays, and interviews. If you're looking to maximize your chances of getting into your dream program, let's connect and discuss how I can help you achieve your goals.
Chirag can help with:
Financial Aid & Scholarships
Editing
Recommendations
Interviews
School Selection
Secondary Review
Application Strategy
Essays
Resume
Work Experience
Co-Founder
Blaze AI
2021 - Present
Hiring Manager
Blaze is an AI powered marketing growth and automation tool. We seamlessly connect Discord, Twitter and on chain data to help you onboard new users, launch user reward programs and understand what marketing and community engagement strategies are working well. We are hiring!! We are backed by amazing investors including YCombinator, Bling Capital, Soma Capital and Dorm Room Fund.
Engineering leader
Meta (Facebook)
2020 - 2021
Hiring Manager
- Built a platform to track flow of key account data for training and run time of critical Machine Learning algorithms such as People You May Know and Account You May Follow. This is to ensure privacy safe guards for these algorithms. - Led the engineering execution for Family Experiences (FX) Privacy, a set of 3 teams spanning 30+ engineers. During my time on the team, we created and executed on a plan to add data governance in the Family Experiences org to improve Facebook’s privacy commitments to users and comply to regulations. - Simultaneously, led the engineering execution for Project WAFFLE, a cross company project to make it easier to manage features across WhatsApp and Facebook. The team included over 30 engineers and involved 100+ Facebook employees. This is a key part of Mark’s vision for a Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking. - Hired Managers and Tech Leads. Turned around Pulse scores for the team. Team had a strong career growth track record.
Engineering leader
Airbnb
2017 - 2020
Hiring Manager
Led multiple teams working together to enable users to create and access accounts easily and safely. 1) Membership - Team is responsible for the full stack signup/login, phone and email verification. These products are used in multiple crucial flows such as checkout, host onboarding etc. - I led the development of features like Phone Signup and Sign in with Apple which led to increase in booking value of over $100M. - Engineering Leader for Trust for Checkout 2020 (a cross company project which at times involved over 100+ Airbnbers) where I led engineering efforts for the Trust org's commitments for the project. 2) Authentication Infra - Team delivers components (libraries and services) that enable the flexible derivation, reliable propagation and configurable enforcement of end-user identity, in online and offline contexts. - This includes building authentication middleware, Oauth platform, token services etc. Previously was a senior software engineer in the Identity, User Knowledge and Screenings and Offline Risk teams. Highlights: 1. Built a XGBoost model to reduce false positives in offline incident detection model which led to $11.8 million dollars increase in revenue. 2. Led an experimental project to improve labeling of text to detect past instances of crime and property damage by users. Did this by state-of-the-art techniques in programmatic data labeling and weak supervision. 3. Led the technical design and migration of several services to a service oriented architecture in the team. 4. Led the project for business verification of volume hosts at Airbnb.
Senior Software Engineer
Airbnb
2015 - 2017
Machine Learning, NLP, Trust, Identity Verification. Acquired by Airbnb in 2017. Backed by Milliways Ventures + Bain Capital Ventures. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-16/airbnb-to-buy-background-check-startup-trooly-to-root-out-scams
Graduate Teaching Assistant
University of California, Berkeley
January 2016 - June 2016
Co-taught Applications in Data Analysis with Prof. Lee Fleming. Led sessions on Machine Learning and Infromation Extraction.
Software Engineer
Amazon
2014 - 2015
Data Infrastructure for Amazon Ads
Chirag was also given offers to work at
CloudKitchens
Labelbox
Goldman Sachs
Education
Chicago Booth
Master of Business Administration - MBA
Activities and societies: Dorm Room Fund, Draper Associates, CB Capital Recipient of SW89 Merit Scholarship Admitted to the MS/MBA Joint Degree with The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the University of Chicago’s Department of Computer Science. Teaching Assistant for Business, Politics and Ethics (with Prof. Brian Barry)
University of California, Berkeley
Master of Engineering, Engineering
Admissions Committee Experience
Funded by Narotam Sekhsaria Fellowship and KC Mahindra Scholarship.
2 Reviews
Overall Rating
5.0
Chirag has helped clients get into these schools: