Snap Mafia: Rajan Vaish, founder of Easel, on building at the intersection of social and Gen AI and what he learned doing research at Stanford and Snap

If you like Taking Inventory, do us a favor and give us a 5-star rating or review. It’s the best way to help support the podcast.  ——— Rajan Vaish is the founder and CEO of Easel, an AI-powered app that lets you create scenes with your AI avatar to express yourself with friends in fun and imaginative ways, all directly from iMessage. Prior to founding Easel, Rajan was a senior research scientists in Snap Research's HCI Group working on projects across AR, smart glasses, and social computing. During our conversation Rajan shares his story going from academic research to Snap, how a research mentality is critical for founders, and why the next wave of social will be built alongside generative AI.   Download Easel at https://easelapps.ai/ Check out Rajan's research: http://www.rajanvaish.com/index.html ——— Connect with James and Daniel! LinkedIn: James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesborow/  Daniel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldruger/  Twitter:  James: https://twitter.com/jamesborow  Daniel: https://twitter.com/ddruger If you like Taking Inventory, do us a favor and give us a 5-star rating and review. It’s the best way to help support us. And subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.takinginventorypod.com/ and follow Taking Inventory on LinkedIn and Twitter!