Karim Varela

I'm an entrepreneur and investor, currently cofounder and CEO at Civilized Software, an entertainment company at the intersection of media and artificial intelligence. We are the creators of porndora.com, a bespoke erotica site that uses AI & ML to build a personalized pleasure profile for every user. We're building an adult site that works for everybody, not just straight men. I was also part of the engineering teams which built Coffee Meets Bagel, Tinder, and Fandango. I earned an MBA from the University of Florida and a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California. I was also a tech reviewer for the book Pro Android 4 and a co-author for the book Instant GSON. Also, I was the founding member of the San Francisco CTO Support Group. • Technically skilled, motivational leader with excellent communication skills, incredible drive, and a great ability to think outside the box. • Well-versed in many disciplines in the mobile industry from application production to network research & development. Have dealt with all major US carriers and European carriers as well. • Proven web-developer and ex-founder of web-development company with knowledge of both the private and enterprise sectors. • A self-starter possessing the talents and awareness to succeed and excel in the business and corporate world. • Excellent public speaker and evangelist. Specialties: * Architecture: Heroku, AWS, Distributed Systems, Microservices, Serverless * Backend Engineering: Python, Node.js, Typescript, REST, GraphQL * Mobile Engineering: Android, React Native * Web Development: HTML, CSS, javascript, React * Databases: Cassandra, Redis, Postgres Investments: * Alka Financial * Balloonr * Ponder * Bandwagon