Prior to rocketship.vc, Sailesh was CTO and co-founder of LocBox (acquired by Square), a startup focussed on marketing for local businesses. Sailesh worked with Anand and Venky at their previous startup Kosmix, and continued on to Walmart as a Director of Engineering at @WalmartLabs. Before jumping into the startup world, Sailesh worked as a Computer Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. Sailesh earned his Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from IIT Madras, his Masters degree in Construction Management from Virginia Tech and another Master degree in Intelligent Systems from University of Pittsburgh. He was a Ph.D. candidate in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Michigan.
While studying at the University of Pittsburgh, Sailesh worked on applying AI to the computer modeling of Cancer. At the University of Michigan, Sailesh was one of the members of the team that developed higher level reasoning for Nursebot, a robotic assistant for the elderly. Sailesh’s research at NASA focussed on contingency planning for the next generation of Mars Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) as part of the Mars Exploration Rovers mission.