Nikil Viswanathan
Founder of Alchemy
Nikil Viswanathan
Founder of Alchemy
Palo Alto, California
Overview
Work Experience
Co-founder and CEO
2017 - Current
Alchemy is the developer platform powering web3. (Watch this video: alchemy.com/company) Alchemy powers over $100B in transactions for tens of millions of users in every country globally. Our mission is to enable developers to bring the magic of blockchain to the world. The Alchemy team draws from decades of deep expertise in massively scalable infrastructure, AI, and blockchain from leadership roles at technology pioneers like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Stanford, and MIT. Backed by Stanford University, Coinbase, the Chairman of Google, Charles Schwab, and founders and executives of globally leading organizations, Alchemy powers billions of dollars of transactions for top companies around the world and has been featured in TechCrunch, CNBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune and numerous other media outlets. The computer and internet fundamentally improved human life on planet earth. We’re excited to help enable the global opportunity of blockchain - the next tectonic shift. We're growing quickly and currently hiring frontend/backend engineers, product managers, recruiters, marketing, business development, account executives, designers, customer success, executive assistants, and many other positions! If you're interested in joining the Alchemy family, say hi at: careers@alchemy.com!
Co-founder and CEO
2016 - 2017
The New York Times: "Nikil Viswanathan and Joseph Lau have built the hottest new social app in America." - #1 in App Store Social rankings - #2 in App Store overall rankings - Front Page Cover Stories: New York Times Business, Yahoo.com, Business Insider, Forbes, TechCrunch, and many more. - Brought college students and high schoolers closer to their friends. The story of how a Sunday afternoon coding session turned into the #1 Social App in the App Store imdtl.com/story.html
Engineer
2012 - 2012
While at home on vacation, I rebuilt Starnik's entire engineering infrastructure in a couple weeks. This overhaul includes a new source code Infrastructure (source control, repositories, branching model), new code review tools, and a new test and dev build environment with automated builds. This was especially tricky due the extremely rigorous and complex requirements of the test systems (hundreds of GB databases, multi-stage testing environment, fine grained test user access control, and complex feature interactions). What used to be a complex build process that took 1-2 hours of the Tech Lead Engineer's time every day now is accomplished with much finer grained control and pinpoint testability of individual features all with only a single button click.
Course / Teaching Assistant
2010 - 2012
TA'd for 6 Courses at Stanford. I single-handedly taught more than 5 lectures (for the entire classes of > 150 students) and developed material for and taught more than 40 sections. Professors told me that the students emailed them saying that they thought my lectures were really great. I also helped with Stanford's first online course (db-class.org) with over 150k students. Fall 2010: CS105: Introduction to Computing Winter 2011: CS121: Artificial Intelligence Spring 2011: CS194: Senior Project Fall 2011: CS105: Introduction to Computing Winter 2011: CS145: Databases Spring 2012: CS194: Senior Project
Product Manager Intern
2011 - 2011
Was a Product Management Intern handling 9 projects for the messaging team. Facebook Messenger launched on my second week of the job. Designed, built, and gave a demo of the first ever prototype of video calling over Facebook Messenger.
Founder and CEO
2009 - 2011
I built the campus events platform Founainhop over my winter break senior year. Within 12 hours, it was being forwarded around to email lists and used by a significant portion of campus. Fountainhop enables students see what events are going on around campus. The platform powered Stanford Admit Weekend, Parents Weekend, Residential Dining and Education, and other university departments. We expanded to serve thousands of students at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Berkeley and colleges around the country.
Associate Product Manager Intern
2009 - 2009
Associate Product Manager Intern for the Search Query Monetization Team.
Program Manager Intern
2008 - 2008
Product Manager Intern for the Exchange Server Team. Designed, personally built, tested, and demonstrated to the division the first integration of Outlook calendar and Facebook.