Endorsements
Matthew Neagle
Kiran has that special superpower of bringing both data and sanity to decision making. One of the sharpest minds I have worked with, he is usually the first to cut through the noise to what matters and has the gravitas to push it forward. But, if you want to really see him shine, give him a mic and ask him to talk about culture. He cares as much about the people and the how as the metrics and the what.
Craig Cincotta
When I think about my career there are certain people who jump off the page as those who “get it”. Kiran is one of those people. He has the unique combination of a super-power (analytics), experience, and the ability to think clearly in the most hectic of times. During my time working with Kiran at Porch I was consistently reminded of how well the values of a company can compliment an organization when you hire individuals who are manifestation of those values. Kiran, in particular, was the embodiment of many values that serve as the glue for great teams and companies. He is a world-class problem solver, someone who truly understands the impact of data and analytics when it comes to clear decision making, and a person who is a testament for the impact collaboration can have when it comes to creating a great leadership team. Kiran is a straight shooter who tears down walls and prevents silo’d thinking from creeping into an organization. If I were to start a business tomorrow and I needed to draft a set of players to create a “Dream Team”, Kiran would be on of the first people I would pick.
Tom Ly
Kiran is one of the most impressive individuals I have ever come across in my career. He is incredibly smart, driven, and of course, analytical. Despite all of that, what I love most about Kiran is his unwavering commitment to helping others. Since I’ve known Kiran, he has been an incredible mentor to me. He offers unique, honest, and really thoughtful advice about anything business or personal related. He is never hesitant to spend time with someone, often times going out of his way to put the needs of others before himself. I’m very thankful for having learned so much from Kiran.
Joanna Lord
Working with Kiran has been a career highlight for me. His passion is evident in everything he does and it pushes the organization around him to be better every day. His analytics methodology is one of the most evolved I’ve come across and I personally learned so much from working beside him. Whether he is building products, leading teams, or creating a data foundation for the company - Kiran’s dedication to doing things excellently is inspiring. I will miss working with him and only hope I get the chance to do it again someday.
Danny Brown
Kiran proved to be an excellent manager and mentor to me during his time at Porch. His analytical insights and thoughtful ability to articulate complex topics made it easy and enjoyable to work with him. He consistently pushes both the business and his direct reports to innovate and tackle meaningful, challenging problems. I would highly recommend Kiran as both a business leader and mentor.
Asha Sharma
I worked with Kiran for the past two years. He instilled an unforgettable and core rigor into our culture while building our analytics platform from the ground up. His demonstrated capabilities including his intellectual horsepower, operational execution, and distinct leadership afforded him opportunities to take on new challenges, solving instrumental problems across the business including in operations, marketing, fundraising and most recently product. He’s one of the clearest thinkers I know and perhaps most notably an inspiring leader. The team he hired is among some of the most talented individuals I’ve worked with in my career, and their respect for Kiran, judicious contributions to Porch and development is a direct reflection of Kiran’s leadership. I strongly recommend Kiran
Alison Roberts
Kiran is an impressive business leader, combining spot-on instinct with analytical know-how. He keenly focuses on data-driven strategy, and he inspires those around him to push for the same. His leadership creates more efficient and strategic business decisions, and he is highly respected at all levels of the organization. He has high expectations and continually challenged me to fight for the changes that I believed in. Kiran is an excellent mentor, and I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to work for him at Porch
Matt Ehrlichman
Kiran is an incredible individual and a great member of any team. He is entrepreneurial, hard-charging, has high expectations, moves fast, hires great people, and is analytical. Kiran has a long track record of building successful analytics organizations and I’d recommend him to other CEOs. In addition, Kiran is a good guy and is a great person to work with. Thumbs up here!
Curren Mehta
Kiran is one of the most intelligent and quantitative people I know. If you get a chance to speak to him, he will surely impress you with his vast knowledge of analytics and e-commerce growth. Furthermore, he has the rare ability to take complicated numerical results and insights and simplify them to be digestible by any listener. He pushes very hard for perfection, and he never asks people to do things that he would not ask of himself. In my opinion, this unwavering pursuit of perfection is one of the main reasons that Kiran is so successful. I learned a great deal, both technically and professionally, as a result of working for Kiran, and for this I am thankful.
Alexandra Charnas
It was really amazing to work with a manager like Kiran. He was hands off enough to provide me the learning opportunities and challenges I was looking for, but there for support and help when I needed it.
I reported to Kiran for a little under a year at Porch.com in his role as head of the analytics team. He was very thoughtful, approaching problem-solving in a logical and methodical way; he is able to think about and analyze an issue with a high level of clarity from multiple view points. Kiran is very talented and fun to work with. I will miss him!
Timothy Ellis
Kiran is smart, analytically-minded, and fair. He has the skills to look at many angles of a problem and apply creative, intelligent solutions. I really appreciated his straightforward style. No beating around the bush, just work together as a team to quality work done efficiently.
I would happily work with Kiran again in the future and strongly recommend him to anyone who asks.
Justin Hayashi
Kiran is a one-of-a-kind mind with a unique ability to blend the analytical with the creative to drive forward game-changing business strategies. He served as a mentor to many employees (myself included) and has an amazing ability to teach, explain, and instill. Kiran had an incredible impact on zulily’s trajectory, but perhaps even more impressive is that he was able to influence everyone around him to strive to do the same.
Matt Francis
I had the pleasure of working with Kiran for over almost 3 years at zulily. Kiran was always a great partner and collaborator with anything we worked on together. He has an excellent fundamental understanding of e-commerce and business in general and was always quick to ramp up on anything new. He is one of the rare individuals that I have run across in my career who “just gets it”. I would gladly jump at the change to work with him again.
Doug Aley
Kiran headed the analytics group when I was at zulily. Beyond being a stud of an analyst, Kiran is also an innovator, pushing the business to do more for customers and backing it up with data. The insights he and his team produced resulted in giant leaps forward in merchandising, product, operational processes, and measurement of the business. I’d work with him in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.
Mike Errecart
Kiran and I worked together for 2.5 years and collaborated closely on many projects. He is a very talented analyst and problem solver with an unsurpassed grasp of e-commerce marketing metrics. Plus the work ethic of a horse. If you need to get a handle on the numbers that drive your business, and you need someone to build the team, systems, and processes to make your analytics function great, then Kiran is your guy.
Brendon McKeon
Kiran is an exceptional analytics leader who can cut through complexity to focus in on the key actionable elements of a problem. His ability to quickly incorporate the details of an analysis into the big picture context creates momentum and drives projects forward. Kiran is also an excellent teacher, mentor, and team leader, and I enjoyed working with him at zulily.
Sonia Nagala Chang
Kiran is one of the most talented individuals with whom I’ve worked. His analytical skills, thought leadership, and intellectual curiosity are truly best in class, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him. He is an expert in e-commerce marketing and analytics, and a proven leader across the board. He will be greatly missed and I would jump at the opportunity to work with him again.
Don Allen
Kiran excels at translating high-level requirements into technical direction(s) and served as the linchpin of our efforts in developing the analytics platform for marketing. He is a professional who truly understands the many facets of a complicated ecosystem, from capturing data through answering critical business questions.
Melissa Baird
Kiran has that perfect balance of intelligence and curiosity that makes him a great analyst that can drive a business forward. He is always happy to help think through a problem and discuss conclusions and potential ramifications. With his gift for taking a complicated analysis and explaining it in an elegant, clear, straight-forward manner, the business is able to make confident directional decisions. I thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with him and would jump at the chance to work with him again in the future.
Beth Lyons
Kiran has outstanding skills in terms of marketing, analytics and communication. He and I partnered several times in the course of working together in zulily’s early years, and I would gladly work with him again. He has great cross-functional capabilities, goes the extra mile to understand the business, and then applies his acumen to accelerate its performance.
In his case, acumen goes well beyond just data and analytics. Kiran assesses the people, technology and data to create very powerful observations and key changes. In terms of zulily’s early years and pronounced growth from startup to major retailer, he has been quite influential.
For his ability, he is highly respected; for his personable and attentive demeanor, he is truly a valued colleague.
Dimple Khurana
I had the fortune of overlapping with Kiran at zulily for about a year. He has the unique ability to take really complex data & simplifying it to drive business decisions, while also working with his team fully understand the intricacies & nuances of the data. The analytics team he built at zulily was data-driven, adept, nimble, and provided great insights to moving the business forward. Kiran is a fun, honest, straight-forward, and effective manager and colleague. We miss him at zulily!
Spencer Kadas
Kiran is an exceptional analyst and leader. His intelligence, personability, and work ethic inspired and drove a young zulily analytics department. I found his direct approach incredibly refreshing and couldn’t have asked for a better boss or mentor.
Alexandra Bochicchio
Kiran has been an essential part of the zulily founding team. His analytical and technical skills combined with his judgment and leadership is a rare and potent combination. Kiran’s passion for start-ups and e-commerce is apparent in every conversation you have with him. Not only that, Kiran is generous with him time and willing to extend himself and lend his perspective and expertise to help colleagues. I hope to work with Kiran again.
Paul Garton
Kiran is a very personable, high energy and effective Analytics Manager. He understands how how to architect and harness big data opportunities, that are insightful and scale with a rapidly growing business. He is also very detail oriented and an extremely competent technician. He has high expectations for himself and his team. His good natured enthusiasm is contagious. I’ve truly enjoyed working with Kiran at Zulily.
Kevin Walsh
There are plenty of more-qualified people here mentioning Kiran’s mastery of e-commerce analytics, so you’re probably already sold, but my experience interacting with Kiran has had little to do with that. He has been the best, no-bullshit mentor to me so early in my career, and anytime I need to be be smacked across the face with reality (figuratively), I call Kiran. If you get bored with the numbers, ask him about literally anything else, and you can bet a good, productive conversation will ensue, and you’ll leave humbled and better informed. He’s pretty damn funny too.
Lys Hardy
I was fortunate enough to work with Kiran in the early phases of start-up environment. We did not always see eye-to-eye and gained mutual respect through intellectual challenge and proven results. Kiran is keen data wizard that enables operators to achieve previously unachievable goals through the systematic detangling of data into manageable and actionable subsets. It was exhilarating to approach a problem with distinct points of view and come out with a result that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I can recommend Kiran to any organization or team. I unequivocally would hire him and would work for him.
Josh Heidler
Kiran is a best in class analyst who has been critical to zulily’s success.
As an analyst, he has a unique ability to fully understand a business question/problem from multiple stakeholder perspectives, key in on the critical metrics, process a proposed answer, and then attack his own hypothesis. You trust the answers Kiran provides, as you know he has already tried relentlessly to disprove them.
Kiran also has a superb ability to break down complex issues and communicate them in an appropriate way for a variety of audiences, so that the explanation and data provided match the needs of each stakeholder.
As a team member, he works to empower those around him to be more efficient, accurate, and critical in their own analysis. He is always willing to get involved and invested in any project to ensure that set-up, analysis, and conclusions of any project are approached optimally. I would jump at the opportunity to work with Kiran again in any capacity.
Beau Nipper
Kiran served as the Sr. Analytics Manager during our time together at zulily. His unique combination of strategic thinking, analytical skills, and leadership were an integral part of the growth zulily experienced in his time there. What amazed me most was despite is high level of understanding of any subject matter, he constantly strove to learn more.
He has been an excellent mentor. I look forward to learning more from him in this capacity and hope to work with him again in the very near future.
Dan Schultz
Kiran does a great job teaching and communicating complex analysis. He also developed and got the best from a team of analysts.
Stacie Stansfield
Kiran truly has a gift to be able to consume, analyze, and explain massive amounts of data. The finance team often reached out to Kiran for help in understanding trends or anomalies related to revenue and customer activity. He always provided meaningful analysis that helped to explain past activity and shape future decisions.
Glen Park
I had the pleasure of working with Kiran when I came to Zulily and found him to be an extremely knowledgeable and intelligent guy, especially in the field of analytics. He excels at knowing what questions to ask, why, and figuring out how to get them answered. Bar none one of the smartest co-workers I’ve ever met.
Provide Commerce dba ProFlowers
Tracy Frommelt
I am in Marketing and regularly worked with Kiran to get his insights and recommendations that ultimately drove critical decisions for my marketing campaigns.
Kiran is a unique mix of traits for a business partner. His analytic abilities are top-notch in that he is able to do sophisticated, specialized analysis, but recognizes the need to balance that with higher-level sanity checks. He takes the time to understand the strategy that his analysis is supporting and is outstanding at translating complicated analysis into layman’s terms so that less analytical audiences can easily understand his work.
Kiran is a genuinely nice person to work with, has a great sense of humor, and always makes time for his colleagues. These are traits that just make him great to work with regardless of his analytical talent.
I can honestly say that there are things Kiran has taught me in my two years working with him that are burned on my brain. In other words, not only did he deliver results needed to make business decisions, he actually taught me how to think in new ways as well
Jennifer Rabin
I had the pleasure of being Kiran’s coworker in Analytics for over three years and he is an exceptional person to work with. He is one of the most rawly intelligent, astute and analytical thinkers I have ever encountered. A keen debater with interests in a wide range of subject matters, I always enjoyed batting ideas around with him; he usually has a unique point of view, especially when discussing complex theoretical ideas.
Kiran is, moreover, an extremely diligent worker who always maintains a good attitude and a sense of humor. He possesses very strong business acumen, with an ability to see the big picture and to strategize accordingly. One key differentiator, in my opinion, is that he also comes up with new and innovative ideas to drive the business forward, which is especially valuable in a nascent industry or company. Finally, on the technical front, he is highly skilled in SAS, SQL and Excel and is an expert in data mining and reconciliation.
Adam Fischer
Kiran combines deep technical skills than enable him to get at nuances of whatever data is needed with an understanding of the important business objectives. He is able to grasp very complex concepts and account for them appropriately in his analysis while making the end result applicable to the business need. He also collaborates very well with others, working as not only an analytical partner but also often coming up with unique innovations of his own.
Aaron Kline
Kiran was an outstanding colleague while we worked together at Provide Commerce. He possess superior analytical and problem solving skills, which were invaluable in the many projects on which we worked together. Kiran has a great disposition, and combined with his attention to detail and ability to simplify the most complex business problems to their essential elements, makes him an asset to any organization. I highly recommend Kiran to any organization: he will be invaluable to any team.
Siddharth Mathur
Kiran brings to table a unique combination of business acumen, strategic thinking and analytical skills that allows him to not only come up with strategically innovative ideas, but also the ability to execute them and get the desired results. A great team player who is willing to go the extra mile to help his colleagues, he will be a valuable asset to any team he is part of.
Steve Setzer
Kiran has an astonishing ability to cut through what isn’t important and focus his (and consequently any team he’s working with) attention to what is important and will drive the organization forward.
Kiran’s strong attention to detail combines well with his aptitude solving complex analytical problems. Additionally he is very capable in communicating those complex problems to others in clear and concise terms they can understand. I would welcome the opportunity to work with Kiran again.
Leif Heikkila
In the nearly 3 years I worked with Kiran, he consistently provided thorough, thoughtful analysis on the granular and strategic levels. He understands the drivers of a successful business and works hard to provide results to his various stakeholders. He is a pleasure to work with–I would recommend him for any analytics position.
Paula Tellez
Kiran is a great team player, it was always a pleasure to work with him and his expertise in analytics was instrumental in many of the test results we worked on. Very proactive, always looking for creative ways to improve our process and keep everyone aware of all the projects we were working on.
I highly recommend Kiran, he would be an invaluable addition to any Analystics or Strategy team.
Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management
Justin Patterson, CFA
While pursuing my M.S. in Finance, I had the pleasure of working with Kiran on projects on multiple occasions. Kiran is one of the rare individuals that pays meticulous attention to detail without losing sight of the big picture. Additionally, he was never afraid to ask intelligent questions, offer constructive criticism, or participate in intelligent debate. Given the preponderance of group think in the world, these characteristics, coupled with his strong work ethic, make Kiran a valued colleague and individual I highly respect.
Raluca Howard
I worked with Kiran in different groups for finance classes taken while in the graduate school. He was always a group member we could count on for coming up with good ideas on how to complete the project. He has a vast knowledge in financial and statistical analysis and he is always willing to explain complex concepts and solutions to the other team member. He also has a very clear and concise writing style so he was often either writing the paper or putting the final touches on the write-up. I really enjoyed working with Kiran and I learned a lot from our collaboration.
Evan LaPointe
Kiran’s work at New Constructs was as core to the company’s successes as is possible. He is a true innovator, making new and existing processes easier, faster, and less fallible. He is a true team player, always sees the positive, and is dedicated to always putting his best effort forth. It was a pleasure working with him.
Sriram Chandrasekaran, CFA
Kiran perfected the quantitative research technology at New Constructs and led the analyst team by example in building the research coverage universe. He is extremely diligent and highly creative in his work. He also spearheaded the effort to create more appealing products to the investment management industry and is one of the key players in making the firm visible in a highly competitive market.
Chris Ochsner
I give Kiran Akkineni my highest recommendation. During the 1&1/2 years we worked together, Kiran routinely demonstrated his ability to effectively lead the analyst department in all facets, from data management to client relations to product developement. He is an incredibly hard and diligent worker, leading by example. He is one of the most logically intelligent people I have worked with.
Sammy Pulliam
Kiran has an unparalleled ability to prioritize tasks in order to achieve the optimal work flow. Kiran’s leadership abilities are very mature for his age. Kiran also possesses excellent communication skills enabling him to effectively communicate as a leader.
Andrew Anglemyer
Kiran is a hard working, competent, and diligent manager. He has proven his ability lead and communicate in a dynamic work environment
Lee Moneta-Koehler
Kiran’s direct communication style with employees creates an open work environment where I feel comfortable expressing my ideas and concerns. His knowledge of finance and the business is always readily available.