Suggestions
Vishnu Tejus
vrt@stanford.edu - Computer Vision Researcher - Global Learning XPRIZE Finalist
Professional Background
Vishnu Tejus is a dynamic and innovative technologist with a deep-seated passion for addressing societal challenges through cutting-edge technology and creative problem-solving. Inspired by the humanitarian and spiritual teachings of Dr. Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, Vishnu began to explore solutions for pressing global issues at an impressively young age. His journey in technology and education is marked by several notable accomplishments, driven by his commitment to making a positive impact in the fields of education and food security.
Vishnu's work is highlighted by his groundbreaking achievement in 2015 when he developed a blueprint utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) to tackle food security issues exacerbated by climate change, a project that gained recognition as he won first prize in a climate resilience competition organized by NASA and the US Government. His forward-thinking approach illustrates a keen understanding of the intersection between technology and sustainability, showcasing his ability to innovate in response to global challenges.
In collaboration with esteemed academic figures, Vishnu co-founded the RoboTutor project in May 2015, a significant initiative under the leadership of Prof. Jack Mostow at Carnegie Mellon University. As Chief Technology Officer, he was instrumental in incorporating advanced features such as handwriting recognition and text-to-speech capabilities into the platform. The RoboTutor project emerged as a formidable contender in the $15 million XPRIZE Global Literacy competition, securing a place as one of the five finalists and winning $1 million in recognition of its potential impact on literacy education worldwide.
Alongside his primary ventures, Vishnu has also made substantial contributions to mobile application development with projects like yPaint, Wow! Camera, and interactive educational games, each reflecting his exceptional programming skills across various platforms. His ventures extend into the realm of augmented reality, where he actively explores its transformative applications in education, healthcare, and gaming through his concept of Personalized and Immersive Experience (PRIME), which aims to enhance learning engagement and effectiveness.
Education and Achievements
Vishnu's academic journey is characterized by excellence and a relentless pursuit of knowledge. He studied Educational Data Mining and Learning Analysis through the Simon Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, focusing on leveraging analytics in education to drive innovation and improvement. Vishnu further honed his technical skills with a perfect GPA of 4.0 at Stanford University, where he delved into advanced learning principles and physics, ensuring a robust foundation in scientific inquiry and technological application.
Additionally, Vishnu completed undergraduate coursework with a stellar score of 4.0 at De Anza College, demonstrating his breadth of knowledge and ability to excel in diverse learning environments. He pursued hands-on design methodologies at Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), cementing his ability to fuse computational thinking with design thinking effectively.
To broaden his technical expertise, Vishnu also earned a Certificate of Achievement in Computer Science from MITx on edX and a Certificate of Accomplishment from Udacity in the same field, illustrating his commitment to ongoing education and adaptability in an ever-evolving technological landscape.
Organizational Involvement
Vishnu's professional involvement extends beyond his initiatives and academic achievements. He has also served as a Computer Vision Research Assistant at the Stanford Workplace Health Innovation Lab, where he contributed to pioneering research at the intersection of health and technology. His prior experience includes work as a Student Researcher at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), further showcasing his deep engagement with AI technologies and applications.
As the former Founder of Ammas3, Vishnu has demonstrated his entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to driving innovation by creating solutions that address significant challenges in modern society. His involvement as the Chief Technology Officer at RoboTutor not only underscores his leadership capabilities but also highlights his dedication to providing educational equity and improving literacy through technology.
Transformative Vision
Vishnu Tejus epitomizes the term “now-ist,” with a forward-thinking vision that aligns current technological advancements with future societal needs. His lifelong commitment to problem-solving, combined with a profound ability to understand and convey complex concepts, has positioned him as a key figure among peers and in educational settings, where he often shares his expertise and teaches younger students. His blend of hands-on experience in technology and his hands-on approach towards innovation are the cornerstones of his philosophy.
Continuing to pursue his PRIME vision, Vishnu actively strives to meld computational thinking with design thinking, aiming for a sustainable and impactful contribution to society. With a strong inclination towards collaboration and interdisciplinary work, he is poised to drive significant change in education, food security, and public health, demonstrating that transformative solutions are within reach when backed by passion, expertise, and innovative thinking.
Achievements
- Winner of the first prize in NASA and US Federal Government climate resilience competition for developing an IoT blueprint addressing food security and climate change.
- Co-founder and CTO of RoboTutor, a finalist in the $15 million XPRIZE Global Literacy competition, winning $1 million in the process for innovative solutions in literacy education.
- Developed successful mobile applications including yPaint and Wow! Camera, showcasing expert programming skills across various platforms.
- Exploring augmented reality applications in education, healthcare, and gaming to enhance user engagement and learning experiences.
Location
People also viewed
Related People
Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.