Vidya Narayanan

Co-Founder at FinalLayer

Building and scaling technology productsFounding and leading companiesRaising venture capitalTeam buildingPatent creationResearch collaboration

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About

I'm Vidya Narayanan, Co-Founder at FinalLayer, where we're building AI agents for creative workflows and professional presence. My career has spanned from engineering roles at Motorola and Qualcomm to leadership at Google, and founding companies like UrbanAMA and Rizzle AI—where we reached 80M downloads and raised $60M. I'm passionate about AI ethics, startup efficiency, and authentic personal branding, believing that 'success lies on the other side of cringe.' I offer hard-won insights on scaling products and building visibility, and I'm always looking to connect with founders, AI builders, and professionals focused on growth.

Networking

What I can offer

›Expertise in building AI products
›Expertise in scaling startups
›Expertise in personal branding
›FinalLayer as a solution for accelerating professional content creation and building community

Looking for

›expanding my professional network
›exploring mutual opportunities in AI and entrepreneurship

Best fit for

FoundersEntrepreneursAI buildersProfessionals looking to grow their brand on LinkedIn

Current Interests

AI Industry & EthicsStartup EntrepreneurshipAI Agents & WorkflowsPersonal & Corporate BrandingTechnology & Market Trends

Background

Career

Started as Engineer at Motorola, became Technologist at IETF, Head of Context Aware Research at Qualcomm, Lead of Android always-on location & context at Google, Co-Founder and CEO at UrbanAMA, Co-Founder and CEO at Rizzle AI, and now Co-Founder at FinalLayer

Achievements

›Built Rizzle consumer platform with 80M downloads, 34M MAUs, and 10M creators
›Rizzle templates generated over 6B views on Reels
›Over 500M videos created using Rizzle features
›Partnered with Getty Images, MapTiiler, and Statista at Rizzle SaaS
›Hosted AMAs with government officials, NFL players, and authors at UrbanAMA
›Bootstrapped and grew Android always-on location and context team at Google
›Built context-aware research team from scratch at Qualcomm
›Key architect of largest commercially deployed IP multicast network at Motorola
›Has approximately 75 issued patents and over 100 pending applications
›Raised $60M in venture capital across ventures
›Grew LinkedIn weekly impressions from 6-8K to 70-100K within a few months

Opinions

Sam Altman/OpenAI's collaboration with the US government on AGI is 'dangerous,' will chill open research, and could let China leap ahead
Supports Anthropic's stance on refusing certain Pentagon work
Extreme capital efficiency ('being a cockroach') has a 'poor tax' and can cause founders to miss opportunities for capture
Success lies on the other side of cringe
Founders must 'show your value in public' and 'tell your own story'
Against spammy LinkedIn automation
AI builders are not thinking enough about who benefits from their technology and the future of employment
Real moats for AI companies are 'data, UX, and community,' not just the underlying technology