Snap Mafia: Rajan Vaish, founder of Easel, on building at the intersection of social and Gen AI a...

30 May 2024 · 40 min
39:55

Episode interview with Rajan Vaish (former Snap researcher, now co-founder & CEO of Easel) covering his academic background, crowdsourcing research (Stanford Crowd Research Initiative), work at Snap on AR/VR (Blocks, Spectacles), and the founding and early product/traction of Easel — an AI-first visual messaging app inside iMessage enabling generated avatar scenes, remixing, and safety/consent controls. The conversation discusses research vs industry, motivation to start a company, technical/product direction for AI-generated imagery and future formats, early traction/funding (raised $2.65M), team size (≈5), and where to download (easelapps.ai).

Questions this video answers

2011

Approximately 1,500 people (from all continents except Antarctica).

Raised $2.65M last year from Unusual Ventures, F7 Ventures and Korazen Capital; angels included ex-Meta execs, ex-CEO of Match Group, founder of Nextdoor, and some Stanford professors.

About five people (small team: engineers, designers, AI engineers, backend help).

Easel can be downloaded via easelapps.ai.

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