Gary Mekikian

Gary Mekikian
Picture taken at LA2DC.org fundraiser in April of 2015
Born	Garo Mekikian Yerevan, Armenia
Residence	La Canada, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Stanford University University of Southern California
Occupation	CEO of M&M Media, Inc.
Years active	1993 — present
Known for	Technology and software entrepreneurship
Board member of	Chairman, M&M Media, Inc., Board of Advisors Stanford Graduate School of Business MSx Program[1]
Website	trebel.io, la2dc.org

Gary Mekikian is an American entrepreneur and investor who is the co-founder and CEO of M&M Media Inc., a Los Angeles-based media technology company. Prior to M&M Media, Mekikian also co-founded International Integration, Inc. also known as i-Cube; answerfriend, Inc., which became Inquira; and GATeIC, Inc.

In addition to business ventures, Mekikian has been a member of Pasadena Angels^[2] and Tech Coast Angels,^[3] nonprofit organizations that offer consultation and seed capital to startup businesses from successful entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and business experts. Mekikian is a co-organizer of LA2DC.org, a Los Angeles-based organization whose mission is to raise awareness of modern day genocides and to eliminate genocide as a war tactic.

Mekikian has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California and an MS from Stanford University, and he holds patents in media technologies^[4][5] and medical devices.^[5][6] Mekikian is a member of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business MSx Alumni Advisory Board.^[7] He collaborates with Stanford University professors Dr. William Barnett^[8] and Dr. John Roberts^[9] to write and teach case studies on entrepreneurship, information technology, semiconductor industry, and the mobile internet.

Education

After attending Hollywood High School for two years, Mekikian earned an electrical engineering degree from University of Southern California and an MS in business from Stanford University.^[10]

Career

Early ventures

In 1993, after working at Hewlett-Packard Company as a sales engineer, Mekikian co-founded the technology company International Integration Inc., also known as i-Cube, which went public in 1998.^[10] i-Cube was acquired by Razorfish, Inc. in 1999.^[11]

After the sale of i-Cube, Mekikian began working with Dr. Deniz Yuret, a researcher in Natural Language Processing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sundar Subramaniam, a co-founder of i-Cube, to found answerFriend, Inc., which developed commercialized web based question-answering technologies.^[12] The company and its flagship product were covered by The Wall Street Journal^[13] and CNN Money.^[14] In 2002, answerFriend merged with another natural language processing technology company, Electric Knowledge, to form InQuira.^[10] In 2011, Oracle Corporation acquired Inquira to to add the company's knowledge management and self-service solutions to Oracle's Customer Relationship Management platform.^[15][16]

In 2006, Mekikian co-founded GATeIC,^[10][17] a semiconductor IP company, to develop algorithms and gate-level implementations for digital signal processing IC's commonly used in wireless base stations and other digital signal processing equipment. The company produced new IC designs that consumed less power than comparable IC's in the market, which were then licensed by semiconductor manufacturers like Maxim Integrated and Analog Devices.

M&M Media / Trebel Music

In 2014, two years after being awarded a patent on a new method of delivering and monetizing digital media on mobile and desktop devices,^[4] Mekikian teamed up with his daughters, Grace and Juliette Mekikian; his classmates from Stanford Business School, Adrian Sada Cueva and Ernesto Vargas; and colleagues Oscar De La Garza and Rodrigo Vargas; to co-found M&M Media, Inc., a digital music distribution company that released the Trebel Music app. The company's goal is to eliminate the forces that drive digital media piracy, and the app is designed to reduce digital media piracy and deliver compensation to the artists by specifically targeting a demographic which uses piracy as a form of media acquisition.^[18][19]

Bibliography

• William Barnett and Gary Mekikian, (2013) Mercado Libre, Leadership and Managing People, Stanford Graduate School of Business^[20]
• Gary Mekikian and John Roberts, (2009) Note on IT Services Industry, Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business^[21]
• Gary Mekikian and John Roberts, (2009) Tata Consultancy Services, Globalization of IT Services, Economics,^[22]
• William Barnett and Gary Mekikian, (2008) Creating Qualcomm, Organizational Behavior, Entrepreneurship, Stanford Graduate School of Business^[23]

References