Rathan Haran

Short Version: Rathan is a Co-Founder of Wixity, a NYC startup that is simplifying and improving social lives by bringing a sophisticated approach to event discovery.  Through his background in Mathematics and Quantitative Modeling, Rathan is building algorithmic solutions that understand people and their social circles’ behaviors to find the best events for them.  Rathan studied Math at NYU and spent five years as a Senior Consultant at a quantitative consulting firm before starting Wixity with Neil Mody.

Long Version: Rathan has been drawn to the applications of math since he was a kid.  After dropping an 800 on the math portion of the S.A.Ts, Rathan found himself in the city that never sleeps, studying at New York University.  Although he began a pursuit in medicine, an intervention with Physics rekindled his fascination with mathematical applications, and he began taking classes which ranged from modeling the stock market to blood flow in the human heart.  He graduated Cum Laude in the spring of 2001 with a B.A. in Mathematics, and minors in Economics and Chemistry.

In August of 2007, Rathan founded Wixity with Neil Mody, who now is working on nrelate, an engine to contextually match web content to blogs.  Wixity’s mission is to promote event discovery by modeling the reasons why we go events, above and beyond our personal interests.  We believe the nature of attending events is significantly influenced by our social circles, and we are building solutions that improve the flow of information from the sources that we value – expert publishers and our friends – to us.  Our products incorporate the most useful event discovery and social coordination tools into a single integrated offering.  Through simple interaction with our products, Wixity will deliver the best events tailored specifically to your interests. Essentially, think of us as an Amazon.com…for events – an effortless way to enrich your social life.

Rathan also finds time to be heartbroken by the New York Mets, dominate Fantasy Sports, and travel the world (though opportunities are limited now).  He is also trying to find more time to read books his friends recommend, string his guitar to eventually take lessons (one step at at time), and develop a knuckle change in wiffle ball.

Prior to all this way cool stuff, Rathan did some pretty interesting things at ERisk, a quantitative consulting firm focused on modeling risk in bank portfolios.  During five years there, Rathan was responsible for building analytical and simulation models to quantify independent and codependent borrower behavior. In addition, he has managed ten implementation teams comprised of two to three analytical and technology resources, has interfaced with clients’ project teams including C-level executives, and has spoken at industry conferences on advanced modeling frameworks.  All of this stuff works well at the bar.  Chicks dig integrals.

Oh, and Rathan also traded derivatives on the American Stock Exchange, worked for a Real Estate Developer, and delivered pizzas.  The penultimate trifecta of post-graduation jobs.