Erik Buchanan
Founder of C3 Ventures
Erik Buchanan
Founder of C3 Ventures
Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
Overview
Work Experience
Founder and Partner
2017 - Current
I've invested in dozens of seed and pre-seed startups that are improving the world in health tech, finance, logistics, and many other areas.
Co-founder and CTO
2020 - 2024
CloseFactor is an AI company leveraging large-scale distributed systems and machine learning to turn a variety of massive datasets, both public and private, into actionable insights that drive revenue. Our team is made up of veteran product builders from Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and various innovative startups.
Head of Artificial Intelligence for Hiring Products, Chief AI Evangelist
2017 - 2020
I ran artificial intelligence (AI) for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, LinkedIn's primary business. These products include LinkedIn Recruiter, the world's largest ML-powered B2B product, which powered most of LinkedIn's revenue. My teams built and employed novel machine learning techniques to get someone hired every 10 seconds. As LinkedIn's Chief AI Evangelist, I pioneered a culture shift at LinkedIn by founding the AI Academy program. AI Academy empowers software engineers, product partners, and leaders across the company with basic AI literacy, as well as hands-on machine learning development to transform LinkedIn into an AI-driven company.
Senior Software Engineering Manager
2016 - 2017
Reinventing how people get hired. I lead several teams (~30 total reports) building brand new, innovative products that aim to fill roles with better candidates, in less time, with less effort. We help find the right job to challenge and fulfill each and every member of the global workforce. If you're looking for a job, we built the Open to New Opportunities flag. Make sure to turn it on!
VP Engineering
2012 - 2020
Too many people are unemployed. Too many jobs sit vacant. How many people really love their jobs? I believe that we are suffering from a matching problem. Too many smart, educated, resourceful people are sitting on jobs that pay the bills but underutilize their talents and leave them unfulfilled. Too many companies could do so much good for the world if they could just find the right talent. Connectifier is here to optimize the allocation of human capital in order to promote global economic progress and individual fulfillment. Every person should love their job, and every company should find amazing people. With the right technology, we can make this vision a reality. I ran engineering at Connectifier, a recruiting technology company acquired by LinkedIn in 2016, before LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft in the same year.
Software Engineer
2010 - 2013
I developed several key features and systems at Google Analytics. I helped develop the Google Analytics External API, which is used as much as is the Analytics frontend to access and organize Analytics data through third party interfaces and platforms. I also interviewed many candidates for Google through university recruiting and vetting senior software engineers. My interviewing experience has led me to give talks to university students on behalf of Microsoft and Google on how to tailor both their resumes and their academic careers to get hired at top-tier companies. My advice always includes: practice interviewing as often as possible, make sure you talk about your programming projects outside of class, and do as many tech internships as possible during college. I did 7!
Security Researcher
2008 - 2010
Securing the Internet by finding and blocking all kinds of web-based exploits and zero-day attacks. The Security Labs is the research labs group within Websense, a public company that protects the internal networks of more than half of US corporations. We in the Security Labs reverse-engineered malware, wrote breaking news stories on current attacks in corporate networks across the world, and presented our research at all of the major computer security conferences throughout the world. I developed sophisticated analysis tools for the Labs, automating thousands of hours of manual research work using machine learning and data mining techniques, combined with virtual machine analysis of malicious software. We were able to predict compromised servers on trusted networks and web sites before they were attacked using predictive analysis and a novel IP reputation system that I built.
Teaching Assistant
2005 - 2008
I taught Java, Assembly, Architecture, Compilers and Operating Systems to undergrad and graduate students, working with several of the best professors and researchers at UCSD. I wrote and graded programming projects, homework assignments and exams, and provided individual instruction in office hours and hands-on lab instruction. As a TA you gain an appreciation for Albert Einstein's view of knowledge: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Software Engineer: Windows Azure Storage
2008 - 2008
I worked as an intern at Microsoft Research at Microsoft's cloud computing platform before it was launched, now known as Windows Azure. Specifically I helped build out the distributed, fault-tolerant storage system Azure provides (equivalent of Amazon S3).
Software Engineer Intern
2007 - 2007
I built infrastructure for doing Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn (i18n) testing across all of Google's web services (Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Search, etc).
Software Engineer: TurboTax Payment Systems
2007 - 2007
Developed internal Apache Axis and Java Web Services interfaces to retrieve and respond to data requests via XML over SOAP for Payment and Pricing Services during Spring quarter at UCSD.