Navid Hadzaad

Navid Hadzaad

Hadzaad at DLD Conference Munich in 2016
Born Berlin, Germany
Residence New York City
Education University of Massachusetts Amherst
Occupation Technology Executive, Entrepreneur
Organization Amazon.com
Known for GoButler
Awards Forbes 30 Under 30

Navid Hadzaad is a technology executive and entrepreneur. He's currently a Product Leader at Amazon.com.[1] He previously served as CEO and co-founder of Angel.ai,[2] a natural language processing technology provider based on the GoButler mobile application that used artificial intelligence to act as a virtual assistant through text messaging.[3] Hadzaad was featured on Forbes' 2016 30 Under 30 list of the top businesspeople in the consumer tech category.[4]

Education

Hadzaad attended Westborough High School[5] and earned a B.B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Career

After graduating, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group before becoming a manager at Volaris Group.

While working for Rocket Internet, Hadzaad co-founded ZipJet, an on-demand laundry app.[6][7] He also worked on building Rocket's on-demand house cleaning start-up, Helpling.[8][4]

In February 2015, Hadzaad founded GoButler, a virtual assistant company which used intelligent algorithms to process automated requests.[9][10][7] Within 48 hours of the application's launch, the company had 10,000 requests. Hadzaad subsequently left Rocket Internet to focus on GoButler as the company's CEO.[11][12][13] Within three weeks, the app was available in Canada, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and had processed over 100,000 requests.[6][14] In July 2015, the company announced an $8 million Series A financing round from investors including Ashton Kutcher and Jared Leto.[8][15] Though originally founded in Berlin, Hadzaad moved the company headquarters to New York City in 2015.[16][17] In March 2016, Hadzaad announced GoButler's shift to a fully automated service driven by artificial intelligence.[18]

In May 2016, the consumer aimed GoButler service was ended and replaced by Angel.ai, a B2B company that created natural language processing technology.[2] In September 2016, Hadzaad was hired by Amazon.com as a product leader. According to reports, there were rumors that Angel.ai had been acquired by Amazon. Amazon corrected this rumor to state it hired Hadzaad as an individual employee and did not acquire the start-up.[19][20]

References

  1. "Amazon Could be Working on a Chatbot". Business Insider. September 22, 2016. Retrieved October 25, 2016.
  2. 1 2 O'Hear, Steve (May 16, 2016). "GoButler Launches Angel.ai to Offer Natural Language Tech to Commerce Companies". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 1, 2016.
  3. Sarah Kessler (July 30, 2015). "Doing Your Errands, For Free, Is Now Someone's Job". Fast Company. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  4. 1 2 "2016: 30 Under 30: Consumer Tech". Forbes. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  5. Chris Sinacola (June 4, 2006). "Grads lived up to goals". Telegram. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  6. 1 2 Steve O'Hear (April 1, 2015). "And Just Like Magic, GoButler Is A Virtual Assistant Founded By Ex-Rocket Internet Execs". Tech Crunch. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  7. 1 2 Martin U. Müller (March 17, 2015). "Start-ups: Der Butler kommt per SMS". Spiegel Online. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  8. 1 2 Anthony Ha (July 30, 2015). "GoButler Takes Its SMS Personal Assistant Out Of Beta, Raises $8M". Tech Crunch. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  9. Lucy England (August 12, 2015). "We tried the free service that promisees to get you anything you want, 24/7 with just a text". Business Insider. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  10. "Startup-Interview mit Navid Hadzaad: Dein persönlicher Butler per SMS!". Unternehmer. April 13, 2015. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  11. Steve O'Hear (April 13, 2015). "GoButler, The Magic Clone Founded By Ex-Rocket Internet Execs, Launches Virtual Assistant In NYC". Tech Crunch. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  12. "GoButler: Turn to Virtual Job to Get Things Done Quicker and Faster". Carve. March 24, 2015. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  13. Kia Kokalitcheva (July 30, 2015). "GoButler, yet another on-demand service for 'anything,' raises $8 million". Fortune. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  14. Alejandro Alba (July 30, 2015). "GoButler text message-based concierge service rolls out of beta, launches worldwide". Daily News. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  15. Christina Kyriasoglou (January 2016). "GoButler dissolves Berlin office, actor Jared Leto invested". Grunder Szene. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  16. Cade Metz (January 21, 2016). "Do We Really Want Messaging To Replace Our Apps?". Wired. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  17. "Babysitter aus dem Netz: GoButler entwickelt automatischen SMS-Diener". Focus. January 23, 2016. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  18. "GoButler pivots to fully-automated service, starting with flight search and discovery". TechCrunch. March 17, 2016. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  19. http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/21/amazon-hired-ceo-chat-commerce-startup-angelai/
  20. Steve O'Hear (September 20, 2016). "Angel.ai, A Company That Builds Chat Bots, Acqui-hired by Amazon". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 25, 2016.
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