# Aseem Kishore > Startup engineer building Tolan, a fun & delightful “AI best friend” — tolans.com Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/aseem Engineer and leader passionate about both the craft of software engineering (building great products) and the crafts of management and leadership (building and leading great teams and companies). Founded my own startup 10+ years ago, and have helped grow and lead multiple other startups since then. Have been both an engineer and a manager/executive, and have worked at companies ranging in size from 4 to 100+. I love working with kind, smart, talented people who hold themselves to high standards on everything they do. I love working on socially positive missions paired with strong business models. And I love working in industries and spaces where high-quality engineering and a top-tier team are competitive advantages. I only accept LinkedIn connection requests from people I actually know and have met, but you can message me here or on Twitter @aseemk. I also write occasionally at https://aseemk.substack.com/ ## Work Experience ### Founding Engineer @ Portola Jan 2023 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States Building Tolan — a fun, delightful, helpful, 3D, voice-native "AI best friend". Like a Tamagotchi you can talk to, or a ChatGPT with personality, memory, and more! https://www.tolans.com/ Over 100k paying users, $1M monthly revenue, and a #1 App Store ranking. But the best part is the team — and we're just getting started. =) ### VP of Engineering @ Pomelo, Inc. Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco, CA Pomelo was a fintech startup that lets immigrants in the US share money with their families back home (starting with the Philippines) more cheaply, safely, reliably, and transparently, using the power of credit. https://www.pomelo.com/ I joined the team pre-launch and helped us launch very successfully to fantastic customer feedback and solid key metrics. I also helped us raise our Series A on great terms and build a whole new v2 product (direct money transfer with GCash integration). As VP Eng, I grew and led a strong and diverse team of engineers (~half the company); grew and managed managers; contributed significantly to and participated in every board meeting; interfaced regularly with our bank and other key business partners; significantly upgraded our fraud, risk, and credit underwriting programs; and co-led EPD with my excellent VP Product peer Sung Hu Kim. I left Pomelo to help build Portola. Pomelo was acquired by Zepz (owners of SendWave and WorldRemit) in January 2026. ### Head of Engineering @ Cardless Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco, California, United States Cardless is a fintech startup that helps brands launch consumer-friendly co-branded credit cards. https://www.cardless.com/ I joined the team right after the company's public launch. Over my time there, we launched several new brands (e.g. the Boston Celtics and Liverpool), raised a $40M Series B, doubled the team from 20 to 40, and significantly grew our consumer adoption (the numbers are confidential). As Head of Eng, I reported directly to our CEO and collaborated closely with other company leaders. Others deserve the bulk of the credit here =), but I was happy to help us improve significantly across strategy, culture, and execution. Examples here include more written communication (e.g. strategy memos), more explicit focus (e.g. company OKRs and key metrics), and more effective all-hands. In addition to overseeing Engineering, I also started our Data function, and contributed significantly to Product as well. With help from Design, I effectively led this "EPD" org and was proud to help us improve our impact and execution. Examples here include weekly demos to keep us shipping and sharing, data-driven experimentation (A/B testing and dashboards), and continuous deployment to production on web (with automated e2e testing). We also shipped several new products, features, and capabilities, of course. =) Finally, I focused my own time on hiring. In collaboration with our recruiting team, I overhauled our job posts, improved our interview process, and contributed to sourcing strategy & execution. Over my year there, we hired 6 engineers, 2 data scientists/analysts, and 1 PM. We also improved the diversity & representation of our team from 15% women to 40% in eng and 45% across EPD! I left Cardless after a year to join Pomelo. I learned and grew a lot here and am grateful to the team for the opportunity! ### Director of Engineering @ Even (acq. by Walmart) Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | Oakland, CA Even was a fintech startup that built a personal finance app to help workers escape the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle. Our secret sauce was that we sold Even to *employers* (B2B2C) and integrated with their HR & payroll systems, allowing us to provide powerful capabilities like realtime projected pay, interest-free paycheck advances, automatic savings, and more. https://even.com/ I led a team of talented engineers that owned our foundational platform, covering employer integrations, payment processing, and more. Over the years, we significantly expanded this platform, helped win and launch several major employers, and withstood 10x growth, fraud attacks, and major third-party production incidents. I focused my own time on hiring (helping us significantly improve both our interview process and close rates), coaching & mentorship (both technical & soft skills), and the business (collaborating closely with product and sales, including helping us arrive at a new pricing model). I also led various SWAT/tiger teams. Two notable examples: when one of our largest customers made a payroll mistake that would have cost them $XXM more than it did, and when COVID hit and we needed to significantly change our offering to keep our business alive. Both these incidents required quick, decisive, calm, coordinated action within days and weeks. I joined Even in 2017 when we were <20 people and pre-product/market fit, and left 4 years later in 2021 when we were >100 people and had $XXM ARR. Even was acquired by Walmart for $XXXM in 2022. I loved my experience at Even and am grateful to the team for the opportunity! ### Senior Software Engineer @ Even (acq. by Walmart) Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | Oakland, CA I joined Even as engineer #5 and helped build and ship our flagship product (Instapay) to our flagship customer (Walmart). The results exceeded our expectations across the board: Instapay is now the second-most used benefit at Walmart after 401(k), and our App Store ratings are a consistent 4.8+, with reviews filled with love & thanks for helping people get by. I mentored new engineers as we grew, and was eventually promoted to lead ~half the team. ### Director of Engineering @ FiftyThree Jan 2014 – Jan 2017 | Greater New York City Area FiftyThree was the company behind Paper, the popular iOS app that won the Apple Design Award and App of the Year. Paper had millions of users who used it for both work and play. https://www.fiftythree.com/ I started, grew, and led our web+backend team, made up of ~10 engineers (half of all engineers at FiftyThree) working across the stack. I focused over time on the "glue" between our teams and code, e.g. end-to-end architecture, APIs, protocols, etc. We shipped many features & services, from automatic cloud backup to a full social network for viewing, sharing, and remixing Paper creations. My last year focused on Paste, a Slack-connected web app & service for team collaboration. I also led the evolution of our service architecture, from a traditional monolithic web app, to multiple services spanning REST APIs and JS SPAs, finally including realtime sync and a schema-agnostic backend for rapid UI development. My team was the largest distributed (remote) team at FiftyThree, so I also focused on communication & culture. I optimized for developer happiness, and with great hires, results & productivity followed suit. FiftyThree was acquired by WeTransfer a year after I left. Paper and Paste live on today thanks to the great work of the team! ### Founding Engineer @ FiftyThree Jan 2012 – Jan 2014 | Greater New York City Area FiftyThree acquired The Thingdom in March 2012 (just before Paper's launch), and I joined the team as the first web/backend engineer. I helped build both our platform and our team, and was eventually promoted to lead that team. ### Co-Founder @ The Thingdom (acq. by FiftyThree) Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | SEA / SFO / NYC / BOS The Thingdom was a social network around things. It aimed to connect people around their products and passions. I co-founded and built this primarily with Daniel Gasienica, a friend and peer from Microsoft. The Thingdom was acquired by FiftyThree in the spring of 2012, and I joined the team to transform our technology into something new. ### Engineering Manager @ Microsoft Jan 2009 – Jan 2011 | Greater Seattle Area I led a team of ~6 engineers working on innovative R&D projects across web and native. In late 2010, my org (Live Labs) was disbanded. I retained 100% of my team through the re-org. Across this time, I helped with hiring and planning, co-led recruiting at MIT, and participated in a multi-year leadership program for future Microsoft execs. ### Software Engineer @ Microsoft Jan 2008 – Jan 2009 | Greater Seattle Area As a new college grad, I drove, developed, and shipped two major projects: • Seadragon Ajax, a JavaScript library for zooming of high-res images. Now lives on as OpenSeadragon (thanks to Ian Gilman and others). [1] • Zoom.it, a URL shortening web service for sharing high-res images. Now lives on as ZoomHub (thanks to Daniel Gasienica and others). [2] After a year, I was promoted to lead my team. [1] https://openseadragon.github.io/ [2] http://zoomhub.org/ ### Teaching Assistant @ MIT Jan 2008 – Jan 2008 | Greater Boston Area Rare undergraduate TA for 6.005 Software Engineering Lab (successor to the famed 6.170), and only TA to lead a lecture (on usability). Awarded a "super TA" honor at the end of the course by fellow TAs. =) ### Intern @ Microsoft Jan 2007 – Jan 2007 Interned on the Internet Explorer team. Helped design and develop what eventually shipped in the IE9 Platform Previews as the IE Diagnostics Tool. ### Intern @ Intuit Jan 2006 – Jan 2007 | Greater Seattle Area Interned in an applied R&D group now called Intuit Labs. Helped design, develop, and ship Thumbstrips, a Firefox extension for visual history. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5045/ This extension was downloaded almost a million times, and was featured as a Recommended Add-on by Mozilla. ## Education ### BS in Computer Science and Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/aseemk - Website: http://aseemk.com/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/aseem JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/aseem/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05