Desigan Chinniah

Advisor, Office of the CTO

2024 - Current

Venture Partner, Mozilla Ventures

2023

After a decade of experiences within the world of Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, the president of Mozilla invited me to become a Venture Partner within their newly formed Mozilla Ventures team. https://mozilla.vc/team/desigan-chinniah/ The role includes: - scouting new pipeline opportunities - supporting existing portfolio - investment committee feedback [Mozilla Ventures, a first-of-its-kind impact venture fund to invest in startups (responsible AI, security & privacy, ethical technology, healthier communities) that push the internet — and the technology industry — in a better direction.] #startups #vc

Board Member

2021

After a decade thinking about privacy, data, surveillance and more within Mozilla — it made sense to apply my experiences to another organisation fighting the fight. https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-board-alissa-desigan-kendra/ With other anonymity nerds who believe that 'Privacy is a Human Right', we support the Executive Director (ED): - governance and fiscal fiduciary duties; - fundraising and grants; - partnerships [The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization defending your privacy and freedom online. It advances human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.] #privacy #security #opensource #501c3

Investor & Advisor

2023

[TigerBeetle is the world’s fastest distributed financial accounting database designed for mission critical safety and performance. Not to mention the smallest and toughest – 1,000,000 journal entries per second on consumer-grade hardware with an incredible storage fault model. TigerBeetle is the system of record for the next generation of financial services.] #databases #infrastructure

Advisor & Executive Coach

2018

[Self is a Web3 fraud prevention platform blending biometrics, cryptography and communications to provide a trust layer for the internet. Self lets people prove they are a specific human. Just how many times have you received an email or a phone call and then thought "Do I know you?*" *Knowing who someone is underpins every personal and business decision. The uncertainty of not knowing is what fraudsters and cyber criminals exploit. Self is revolutionising the experience of identifying users in finance, removing friction caused by current processes and enabling certainty in every interaction. It's a platform which gives users control over their data, makes interactions and transactions safer for business and protects personal information from misuse... …and it costs 200x less than current systems.] #trust #identity #fraud

Advisor & Executive Coach, Open Source & Research

2020

[Zama is a new homomorphic encryption scheme for deep learning that is 1000x faster than Microsoft’s CryptoNets, without any limitation in terms of network architecture or depth. It's tackling the problem space around the rampant reality of data breaches. Currently, companies have no way to protect against unauthorized access to their user data, such as when hackers steal the data or governments subpoenas them. The massive financial losses incurred cannot be prevented with traditional IT security anymore, as hackers have an incentive to hack a company that is proportional to their userbase. This is why the market for data security is growing 20% YoY.] #encryption #cryptography #security #machinelearning #datascience #privacy #data #ai #fhe

Venture Partner

2022

I am African (South Africa born in Durban). And I care deeply about the future of the continent, its challenges as well as opportunities. Being a venture partner allows me to get up close and personal with early stage innovation led by gritty and determined entrepreneurs off-the-continent solving problems for-the-continent. The role includes: - identifying new pipeline opportunities - supporting existing portfolio - founder mentoring and coaching - expansion and growth [Ventures Platform back founders building the future of Africa. We invest in companies that solve for non-consumption, plug infrastructural gaps and democratise prosperity in Africa, by eliminating the barriers to access and reducing the costs of delivering goods and services.] #africa #startups #vc

Investor

2024

[Diagon is a next generation sourcing and procurement platform, helping companies source manufacturing equipment, starting within the automotive, aerospace, and battery industries. The Diagon supply chain toolkit will seamlessly propose relevant equipment based on requirements thereby eliminating months of supplier onboarding, product discovery, quotes and price negotiations.] #manufacturing#supplychain

Investor

2023

[Intron Health provides clinical speech recognition for 200+ accents spoken in developing countries starting with Africa, reducing clinical documentation time by 6x, and freeing up time so overworked doctors can spend more time with patients. Intron is post-revenue with 27 active hospitals across 4 African countries. NVIDIA and the Commonwealth recently partnered with Intron to bring our technology to several Commonwealth states. They recently signed Africa's largest hospital and the 3rd largest hospital in the world, Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa; West Africa's largest Hospital, University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria; and Meridian Health Group, a leading private hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.] #healthcare #speech #voice #ml #ai #africa

Investor

2023

[RunYourself is the leadership development platform helping managers and aspiring leaders develop the skill of coaching through an experiential learning-by-doing solution that combines two elements - peer-to-peer coaching and technology. Coaching is at the core of all the 'soft' skills leaders need to develop beyond their technical ones - including effective communication, emotional intelligence, feedback, conflict resolution, delegation and collaboration. It's the skill of catalysing critical thinking, creativity and self-awareness in those they interact with - through active listening, asking great questions and sharing thoughts effectively. Once leaders are paired they are provided with a crash course into coaching and our 'coach co-pilot' app that helps them coach each other just like an executive coach would.] #futureofwork #coaching #education