Meet the Team
Meet the Team
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Jean Paoli
CO-FOUNDER
Jean Paoli, a pioneer in the field of document engineering, is one of the inventors of XML and, during his time at Microsoft, started 4 >$1B businesses for the company: the XML effort, Microsoft InfoPath, the modern Microsoft Office file formats, and Microsoft's open-source subsidiary that enabled today's massive open source usage in Azure. In addition, he has created two startups with the renowned Inria.
Ecole Des Ponts | Inria Startups | Microsoft
PRODUCT
Alexandra Durbin
Alexandra brings 4+ years of product and CX design experience. She was previously a product strategist at Coursera. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Washington, where she double-majored in physics and astronomy.
Coursera | Udacity | University of Washington
PRODUCT
Nikko Ong
Nikko brings exceptional business growth and engineering skills to our product management team. He built and patented products as an engineer and growth product manager at Haply Robotics. He received his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from McGill University.
Haply Robotics | Pratt & Whitney | McGill
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Elena Pricoiu
Elena brings 9.5 years of software engineering experience, at Microsoft working on enterprise products and at Facebook working on key video and ads payment technologies. She received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.
University of Toronto | Microsoft | Facebook
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Eric White
Eric brings 35 years of experience in systems analysis and software development. He specializes in document formats, and has architected, designed and coded extensive enterprise-class applications and systems, including critical systems for multinational organizations.
Author | Microsoft | OECD
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Rishi Rajaram Geetha
Rishi started as an intern at Docugami and has now joined us full-time as a software engineer. She brings great relevant experience, including UX design and work on intake and document conversion of large data files and records. Rishi graduated the University of Washington with a degree in computer science and a minor in linguistics.
University of Washington
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Anurag Saykar
Anurag is a backend developer with significant experience designing and deploying complex reinforcement learning projects. He received his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Buffalo, and previously spent two years building end-to-end machine learning pipelines with a focus on natural language processing.
University of Buffalo | Trendzlink
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Tim Schutz
Tim brings deep experience across a wide range of programming languages, mobile, and mixed/augmented reality. He spent 7+ years at Microsoft, most recently as senior engineering lead for the Gameplay systems team in Mojang Studios. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Vanderbilt University.
Vanderbilt University | Microsoft
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Stephen Erstad
Stephen brings deep technical expertise across a variety of industries. Most recently, he served as a lead engineer at Target, spearheading key initiatives from consumer-facing UX/UI projects to internal business processes. He received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.
Target | University of Minnesota
ML ENGINEER
David Chang
David recently completed his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, with a minor in Mathematics, from the University of Washington. David has served as a research assistant in deep learning for vision and language and has also been a teaching assistant for data programming.
University of Washington
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Kenzie Mihardja
Kenzie is a student at the University of Washington, on track to graduate in December 2022 with a bachelor of science degree in computer science focused on data and machine learning. In addition to his coursework, he serves as a teaching assistant. Previously, he helped lead online marketing and fulfillment for an online retailer.
Target | University of Washington
INTERN, MS CS STUDENT
Katherine Murphy
Katherine is an undergraduate computer science student at the University of Washington. In addition to her coursework, Katherine serves as a teaching assistant in software design and implementation, contributing to course development and managing course infrastructure.
University of Washington
TECHNICAL ADVISOR
Martin Sawicki
Martin was an Engineering Manager at Microsoft where he co-created the Microsoft Office APIs, played a leadership role in Word and led the Java support effort in Azure. Martin spent 2 years leading Docugami's architecture. At Princeton, he studied CS, with a concentration in AI and cognitive studies.
Princeton | Microsoft
TECHNICAL ADVISOR
Jim Allchin
Jim held leadership positions at Microsoft from 1990 to 2007, including co-president of the Platform Products and Services Group, with responsibility for Windows for consumers and business users, Windows Server product line, and developer tools. Previously, he served as chief technical officer at Banyan.
Banyan | Microsoft
AI SCIENTIST
Gregory Senay
Gregory served as Chief Science Officer at xBrain and as Senior Scientist at Panasonic, working in Natural Language Processing. Gregory is also an AI mentor at Frontier Development Lab/NASA. He received his PhD in computer science from the University of Avignon.
University of Avignon | xBrain | Panasonic
AI SCIENTIST
Louise Naud
Louise is a senior AI scientist with 15+ years in machine learning and computer vision, including a number of startups. She received her MSc in machine learning and mathematics from Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, and served as a research analyst at the California Institute of Technology.
Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan | Cal Tech
HEAD OF APPLIED MACHINE LEARNING
Gregory Renard
Greg brings 20+ years of Applied AI expertise, specializing in NLP, Knowledge Discovery, Conversational AI, and Foundation Models. He has led transformative AI strategies for various organizations, including pioneering work in document management at AAICO, knowledge extraction at NASA, and speech dialog systems at xBrain. Greg is a respected speaker and advisor, contributing significantly to industry, academia, and the community.
Stanford-CPD | FDL-SETI-NASA | AI4Humanity
NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
Steve DeRose
Steve, PhD Linguistics, with over 50 publications and former Brown University researcher, is a distinguished scientist noted for his contributions to NLP, Computational Linguistics and to key standards related to document processing.
Brown University | National Library of Medicine
AI SCIENCE INTERN
Thomas Bedart
Thomas will complete his Master of Engineering degree, specializing in Data Science, from CentraleSupélec in 2025. He has contributed as a Data Scientist and Generative AI engineer for multiple companies as part of Paris Digital Lab.
CentraleSupélec | Paris Digital Lab
AI SCIENCE INTERN
Vishnou Vinayagame
Vishnou is completing a double degree program in which he will earn a Master of Science in Applied Computing from the University of Toronto and a Master of Science in General Engineering from CentraleSupélec. He served as a Data Science intern at Ekimetrics, and previously worked at a variety of companies as part of Paris Digital Lab.
University of Toronto | CentraleSupélec | Paris Digital Lab
HEAD OF SALES
Dan Blanchard
Dan brings 10+ years of leading sales teams, growing revenue, and building partnerships across the technology sector. Most recently, he held key regional and partner sales roles at Snowflake. Previously, he worked at Sigma Computing, Okta, SAP Concur, and Amazon. He holds a BA in Media Arts and Communications from Eastern Oregon University.
Snowflake | Sigma | Okta | SAP Concur | Amazon
SALES
Dane Renkert
Dane brings 10 years of sales experience, most recently with Komiko, Seattle-area startup that improves CRM with data and machine learning. Previously, he helped bring real estate technology startup Brivity to market and started his sales career at Zillow.
WSU | Zillow | Brivity | Komiko
SALES
Kyler Hamari
Kyler is a senior sales executive with experience leading sales teams and nurturing long-term customer satisfaction. He was an early sales leader at Brivity, helping it grow during its early startup days. He studied materials and metallurgical engineering before discovering his passion for sales.
Brivity | Colorado School of Mines
OPERATIONS
Sandy Moritz
Sandy brings 34 years of experience in budget planning, payroll and financial statement, and all accounting functions. She has worked for a wide range of businesses and non-profit organizations, and her expertise will ensure smooth planning and operation as we grow.
Shoreline Community College | Edmonds College
BUSINESS ADVISOR
Kevin Riegelsberger
Kevin was President of Avalara, Inc., raising over $200M and helping its recent IPO. He founded Epicor, one of the industry’s largest financial ERP providers and managed the ‘turn around’ of CapitalStream from struggling start-up to industry leader.
Epicor | CapitalStream | Avalara
BUSINESS ADVISOR
Charles Fitzgerald
Charles drove the platform strategy for VMWare Cloud Foundry and Microsoft .NET. Charles is a well-known Seattle-area angel investor and a highly regarded strategist for building and nurturing worldwide-level platform ecosystems.
Microsoft | VMWare | Platformonomics
INTERN, MS AI STUDENT
Zhaofeng Wu
Zhaofeng is an AI MS student at UW with a double degree in Linguistics (B.A) and Computer Science (B.S). His research is in NLP/ML under the direct supervision of Professor Fei Xia. He has completed an internship at Axon with an upcoming one at Facebook.
University of Washington
INTERN, BS CS STUDENT
Jonathan Chen
Jonathan is a senior at the University of Washington, and will graduate in June 2021 with a major in computer science and minors in statistics and Chinese. He brings a string of technical skills to Docugami and has served as a lead TA for multiple offerings of an upper-level CSE course.
University of Washington
INTERN, BS CS STUDENT
Jack Zhou
Jack completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington in June 2022, receiving a bachelor of science degree in computer science and a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry. In addition to his coursework, he served as a teaching assistant. He plans to pursue a career in machine learning/natural language processing.
University of Washington
BOARD MEMBER
Jean Paoli
Jean Paoli, a pioneer in the field of document engineering, is one the inventors of XML and, during his time at Microsoft, started 4 >$1B businesses for the company: the XML effort, Microsoft InfoPath, the modern Microsoft Office file formats and Microsoft’s open-source subsidiary that enabled today's massive open source usage in Azure. In addition he has created two startups with the renowned Inria.
Ecole Des Ponts | Inria Startups | Microsoft
BOARD MEMBER
Ilya Kirnos
Ilya is a co-founder and CTO at SignalFire. Previously, he was a software engineer at Google from 2004-2012, serving as technical lead for Gmail Ads, Adwords Performance and Scalability, and Google Prediction Markets. After Google, he led platform development at CardSpring, a payment platform company that was acquired by Twitter.
Google | SignalFire
SignalFire is the first venture capital firm structured like a technology company. We take a hybrid human + technology approach to investing and are composed of a team of world-class investors and engineers building tools and infrastructure to help with the most common founder pain points – recruiting, business development, and customer acquisition. In addition, our distributed network of 75+ advisors gives founders access to some of the world’s best entrepreneurs, product minds, and engineering leaders in virtually every key discipline and industry.
NextWorld Capital
NextWorld Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in enterprise technology startups and helps them grow into global leaders. We help entrepreneurs build and optimize the right go-to-market model and then accelerate growth with our Global Enterprise Platform, designed to bring together the best enterprise startups and 100+ of the largest global corporates as customers and partners. NextWorld’s investments include Zuora (ZUO), Gong.io and HeadSpin. NextWorld is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in London and Paris.
Cutting-Edge Document Technologists and Document Users
1. Bob Muglia, former CEO of Snowflake Computing and former head of Microsoft’s Office and Azure businesses.
2. Grammarly | https://app.grammarly.com/
3. Greg Badros, former head of Google Apps; Founder and CEO of Prepared Mind Innovations.
4. Shishir Mehrotra, Co-founder and CEO, Coda, the online documents and spreadsheets company.
5. Kevin Reigelsberger, former president, Avalara.
6. Fenwick & West Investments.
7. Barry Abbott, partner, Lane Powell & Associates.
8. Alan Smith, partner, Fenwick & West.
Silicon Valley, Paris, and Seattle-Area Angel Investors
1. Thomas Reardon, co-founder of CTRL-Labs, which is developing technologies to translate neural and muscular impulses to control devices, and was recently acquired by Facebook.
2. Ellen Levy, former head of corporate and business development at LinkedIn, Ellen Levy SPT.
3. Sarah Imbach, former senior executive at PayPal, LinkedIn, and 23andMe, SIAN Ventures LLC.
4. Sunil Chhaya, Silicon Valley angel investor.
5. Marc Jalabert, former executive at Microsoft Western Europe, Acequia Capital, LLC.
6. Hank Vigil, former senior vice president for strategy and partnerships at Microsoft, Acequia Capital, LLC.