Brian Witlin is an American businessman and fine artist. He is an entrepreneur who has co-founded tech companies including Leverworks, Shopwell, Golaces and has led

Yummly Yummly is an American website and mobile app that provides users recipes via recommendations and a search engine. Yummly uses a knowledge graph to offer a semantic web search engine for food, cooking and recipes. In 2014, Yummly had 15 million a ...

as its CEO both before and after being acquired by Whirlpool in 2017. Witlin participates as a lecturer at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

Hasso Plattner Institute of Design The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school, is a design thinking institute based at Stanford University. David M. Kelley and Bernard Roth founded the program. According to the ''New York Times'', the d.school ...

Early life

Brian Witlin was raised near Chicago, Illinois. He attended Glenbrook North High School. Witlin graduated from Lehigh University with a bachelor's degree in business and economics. He served two terms as class of 2001 President and founded his first software company in his dorm room. Brian later completed his master's degree in Mechanical Engineering and Design at the Stanford University School of Engineering. For his Master's thesis, Witlin Co-Founded RootPhi, a new product development incubator with partner Doug Patt.

Career

Witlin's career began while a senior at Lehigh University. He co-founded a custom software development company called Lever Works with Keith Schacht and Zach Kaplan. In December 2001 Lever Works was sold to Leo Media for an undisclosed sum.

RootPhi

While completing his master's degree in Mechanical Engineering and Design at the Stanford University School of Engineering, Witlin Co-Founded RootPhi, a new product development incubator with partner Doug Patt. The company's success and approach to portfolio innovation garnered media attention for Witlin. On September 4, 2007, while in partnership with

Timbuk2 Timbuk2 is a San Francisco-based bag manufacturer and marketer. The company produces a variety of pre-made and made-to-order bags. Timbuk2 is owned by private equity group TB2 Investors. In 2014, the company was ranked as the 2nd largest manufactu ...

making limited edition messenger bags out of RootPhi's Reclaim Brand recycled fabric, Timbuk2 and RootPhi received a Cease and Desist letter from

TARGET Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

for using the bullseye logo within the Reclaim fabric. This fabric was utilized in a line of limited edition messenger bags manufactured by Timbuk2 (Lamitron Bags). This move by

halted production of the recycled bags angering many and sparking controversy around copyright law and recycled and repurposed materials. Although the collaboration with Timbuk2 ended prematurely, RootPhi was able to successfully sell another of their incubated companies, GoLaces, LLC, a footwear accessory business to a publicly traded footwear company for an undisclosed amount in February 2008.

IDEO and Shopwell

After the sale of Golaces, Brian, in conversation with founder

David M. Kelley David M. Kelley (born February 10, 1951) is an American engineer, designer, entrepreneur, businessman, and educator. He is co-founder of the design firm IDEO and a professor at Stanford University. He has received several honors for his contrib ...

, joined global design firm IDEO as

Entrepreneur in Residence An Entrepreneur in residence, or Executive in residence (EIR), is a position most often held by successful entrepreneurs in venture capital firms, private equity firms, startup accelerators, law firms or business schools. The EIR typically lead ...

in June 2008. He co-founded a personalized nutrition app, Shopwell that provides healthy food recommendations for users, based on their unique dietary needs. The company raised venture funding from New Venture Partners and IDEO. He led a team of engineering and registered dietitians to create the first personalized nutrition scoring algorithm leveraging machine learning and dietetics. Shopwell was acquired by HarvestMark in 2013, which was again acquired by Innit in 2016.

Yummly

In 2009, Witlin was appointed as a head of mobile & platform of the personalized recipe recommendations and search platform,

by their board of directors. He handled day-to-day operations and opened its API to other companies as a paid service. By 2014, it has 15 million active users in the US and was named "Best of 2014" in Apple's App Store. He became the chief executive officer of the company in October 2016. Under his leadership, Yummly grew from 1M to 27M registered users, before acquired by the appliance manufacturer Whirlpool in 2017 for an undisclosed amount.

Fine artist

Witlin is a classically trained artist, claiming to be the first cyborg artist utilizing his classical training and AI. Brian has created hundreds of replications of his own artistic brain using

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

. He collaborates with these AI (artificial intelligence) models to create each composition which is then rendered in oil on canvas. His practice largely speaks to the growing relationship between human and machine while examining the role technology plays in everyday life. He is represented by Melissa Morgan Fine Art and JJ Harrington Gallery.

Public speaking

Witlin speaks frequently at conferences and industry events on the topics of artificial intelligence, marketing automation and user growth, such as SXSW, Growth Beat, VentureBeat Webinars, Smart Kitchen Summit and Health 2.0 conferences. He has also participated in the design forums and has given lectures at the

Others

Witlin holds 8 patents that are registered in his name. He is the current advisor of startups, including Directly, Zeel and Upside, and has also served as an advisor 500 Startups,

StartX StartX is a non-profit startup accelerator and founder community associated with Stanford University. It was founded by Cameron Teitelman and Dan Ha in 2011. It began as a spin-off of Stanford Student Enterprises, the non-profit financial a ...

, and the Designer Fund earlier. He is also the founder of Diamond MMA, a premium

martial arts Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practiced for a number of reasons such as self-defense; military and law enforcement applications; combat sport, competition; physical, mental, and spiritual development; entertainment; a ...

protective equipment manufacturer and an Apple Watch band company, Archr.co. Apart from business, Witlin is also a trained fine art artist and photographer. He is also a lecturer at the Stanford University's at Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, where he runs executive education programs and coaches students about entrepreneurship.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Witlin, Brian Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Businesspeople from Chicago Lehigh University alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni American painters