Dan Avida is the Co-Founder and CEO of Engageli. Before founding the company, Dan worked in technology as an executive and/or board member for more than three decades. Throughout his career, he has scaled several companies from a small founding team to over $100M in revenues and valuations of over $1B. As co-founder of Decru, he led the company from its inception through its acquisition. He also served as Chairman and CEO of EFI, where he oversaw the development of its flagship product from the earliest days and achieved market capitalization of over $3B. Most recently, he acted as General Partner at Opus Capital, where he led early-stage investments in several companies, including SolarEdge, Inc. (NASDAQ: SEDG).
Dan has a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering, summa cum laude, from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. Fresh off a big win of Engageli being named “Best Higher Education Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2022, Dan shares where he came from, where they are now, and where they are headed in this detailed interview that includes some key bits of business (and life) advice.
What prompted you to first get involved with education and technology?
I have been working in Silicon Valley as an engineer, CEO, and early-stage tech investor since the late 1980’s. During this period, I was fortunately closely involved with several companies that scaled from a small founding team to over $100M in revenues and valuations over $1B. My wife, Daphne Koller, was a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University for 18 years.
In addition to her research, Daphne worked on innovative approaches to education. She left Stanford to co-found Coursera, one of the world’s largest online education platforms, providing many millions of learners everywhere unprecedented access to education, as well as the flexibility to learn. However, MOOCs do not provide the invaluable connections offered by in-person classes. At Engageli, we are focused on delivering a new comprehensive learning environment purpose-built to meet learner and instructor needs. Our platform is designed to enable access to quality education.
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