Helping businesses and professionals put AI to work.

I combine AI strategy, business operations and hands-on building to help organizations move from ideas to action, founders navigate growth, and individuals make AI useful in their work and everyday lives.

Let's talk Explore my work

Tanaka Ian Chikosi

AI Strategist, Investor, Operator, and Advisor

San Francisco, California

14 years spanning strategy, operations, entrepreneurship, and tech investing.

Experience includes:

The Wharton School—MBA

University of Virginia—BS Mech Eng / BA Financial Econ

Tailored advisory, support & implementation

How I can help

Whether you lead an established organization, are scaling a high-growth startup, or want personal hands-on guidance with AI, work is tailored directly to your practical needs and goals.

AI Strategy & Implementation

Organizations and Leadership Teams

I help organizations identify worthwhile AI opportunities, choose an approach and put a scoped solution into practice—with clear priorities, responsible adoption and hands-on implementation.

·Assess and prioritize AI use cases against business needs, feasibility and risk.
·Evaluate tools and models, and build a practical implementation roadmap.
·Establish practical AI and data governance—covering approved tools and uses, data sharing, security requirements, ownership and human oversight.
·Design and implement a scoped workflow, with human review, documentation and handover.

Discuss organizational advisory→

Example Engagement

“Which AI opportunity should we act on first?”

Possible Deliverables

A prioritized opportunity assessment and scoped pilot plan covering the workflow, tool choices, data-handling requirements, ownership and success measures.

Governance support can include

·A data-flow and provider review.
·Practical AI-use rules, approvals and ownership.
·A prioritized safeguards and implementation plan.

Where needed, I work alongside your IT, security, privacy and legal teams.

Discuss organizational advisory→

AI for Product & Growth

Founders and Startups

I help founders identify where AI can make a practical difference, build and test useful solutions, and apply AI to product and go-to-market decisions.

·Prioritize AI use cases around a specific customer, product or operational problem.
·Build and test a scoped AI-enabled workflow or prototype using appropriate tools and models.
·Apply AI to customer research, feedback analysis, messaging or go-to-market preparation, with review for accuracy and usefulness.

Discuss startup advisory→

Example Engagement

“Where could AI help our small team most?”

Possible Deliverables

One prioritized use case, a working pilot or prototype, and a practical plan for testing and using it.

Discuss startup advisory→

Practical Workflow Guidance

Individuals and Professionals

Personal AI guidance and hands-on support tailored to your specific workflow, recurring tasks, and learning goals.

·Learning which AI tools and developments are relevant to specific needs.
·Building useful workflows together for work and everyday life.
·Hiring me to deliver a clearly scoped project using AI and my judgment.

Tell me what you’d like help with→

Example Engagement

“How can I make AI genuinely useful for my recurring work?”

Possible Deliverables

A tailored workflow setup, evaluated tools, and a practical routine for your recurring tasks or a scoped project.

Tell me what you’d like help with→

Scope and deliverables are agreed on before work begins.

Projects in Practice

Selected Work

AI applications, operating systems, and frameworks built to address complex operational and strategic challenges.

Explore my GitHub→

Featured Project · Independent ProjectPublic repository on GitHub

Product-overview cover

Career Command Center↗

Problem: Career research, networking and interview preparation often sit in disconnected tools.

My Contribution: I independently built an application bringing opportunity research, relationship tracking and interview preparation into one workflow.

What Changed: Information can be connected and reused across the career-search process rather than repeatedly gathered and reorganized.

Output: A working application, shared with a handful of trusted individuals for personal use, with a public code repository.

Relevant IfYour business has a fragmented research or knowledge workflow that could benefit from a purpose-built application.

View code on GitHub→Inquire about this project

Google · Internal InitiativeConfidential internal workflow

AI GTM Intelligence Agent

20–30 hrs/week

Estimated time saved across the marketing team

Problem: Scattered launch updates required time-consuming manual reconciliation.

My Contribution: I built and refined an AI workflow that compared new signals against the launch plan.

What Changed: Structured briefings supported faster review and action, with human judgment retained.

Impact: Saved an estimated 20–30 hours of manual work per week across the marketing team.

Relevant IfYour team spends too much time gathering and reconciling updates.

Inquire about this work→

Google · Internal InitiativeConfidential internal system

AI Launch Operating System

50+

Flagship products, features and announcements at Google I/O 2026

Problem: Fragmented trackers obscured launch readiness, dependencies and risks.

My Contribution: I built a centralized operating system with shared tracking, clear ownership and cross-functional reviews.

What Changed: Teams and leadership gained a consistent view of readiness and decisions.

Impact: Supported planning and execution for 50+ flagship products, features and announcements at Google I/O 2026.

Relevant IfYou need coordinated delivery across multiple teams.

Inquire about this work→

Independent ProjectAdvisory operating model

Startup Success Operating System

Problem: Technology companies need to grow startup and SMB customers without increasing support costs account by account.

My Contribution: I designed a reusable operating model spanning qualification, onboarding, account health, service playbooks and sales handoffs.

What Changed: A broad growth objective becomes practical decisions about customer priorities, support and expansion.

Output / Intended Impact: A repeatable approach to activation, retention and expansion, measured through conversion, time to value and cost to serve.

Relevant IfYou want startup and SMB customers to become a meaningful revenue segment.

Inquire about this work→

Engagement Process

How We Work Together

Business judgment and hands-on work, connected—from understanding what matters to putting a useful solution into practice.

Start with the business problem

We look at the decision, bottleneck or opportunity, the people involved and what better would look like. The starting point is your needs—not a particular AI tool.

Define a useful outcome

Agree whether you need an assessment, ongoing advice or a scoped implementation. Define the deliverables, success measures and responsibilities—including relevant data, security and governance requirements.

Develop, test and refine

I combine analysis, practical advice and hands-on building as the scope requires. We review real outputs together, test assumptions and refine the work based on what we learn.

Put it to work

You receive clear recommendations or a working solution, with the guidance, documentation and handover agreed upfront. We make ownership, human oversight and next steps clear.

Every engagement is scoped to what you actually need—whether that is a strategic assessment, an advisory series, or hands-on implementation with documentation and handover.

Request an intro call →

Strategy, Operations & Growth

Experience

Leadership and operating experience across technology strategy, hypergrowth scaling, company building, and investing.

AI, Technology & Commercial Growth

Google · Meta · Lenovo

My work at Google includes building AI launch systems, enabling product adoption and leading partner growth programs that contributed $654M in annual partner revenue in 2025. I also bring operations strategy experience from Meta and corporate strategy experience from Lenovo.

Scaling Teams Through Hypergrowth

Zenefits

I built and led a 30+ person Product Operations organization as Zenefits grew from Series A to Series C. At the B2B SaaS company, I developed managers, expanded operations and connected Product, Engineering and Customer Support through rapid growth.

Building a Company

Blinte · Co-founder & COO

As co-founder and COO, I helped build Blinte—a food-tech business combining B2B SaaS for restaurants with a consumer-facing platform. I led product strategy, fundraising, customer acquisition and day-to-day operations, from initial concept through the sale of the company's intellectual property.

Investing in and Mentoring Startups

BAG Collective · DNX Ventures

I combine angel investing through BAG Collective, early-stage investing experience at DNX Ventures, and founder advisory through Google for Startups and CapitalG-related programs. Through The Chikosi Group, I also work on business development and investment initiatives across sub-Saharan Africa.

Beyond Borders

Global Perspective

Born in London and originally from Zimbabwe, I’ve lived across four continents, including many years in Washington, D.C., and time in New York, Mauritius, Bangkok, and Johannesburg. I now call San Francisco home and return to Zimbabwe regularly. That international experience shapes how I work across cultures, markets and teams—with curiosity, adaptability and an appreciation for local context.

Zimbabwe

Origins & heritage

London

Birthplace

Washington, D.C.

Home for 15+ years

New York

Lived & worked

Mauritius

Lived & worked

Bangkok, Thailand

Lived

Johannesburg, South Africa

Lived & worked

San Francisco

Current home base

San Francisco Bay Area

Where I call home. At the heart of AI innovation.

Education

Graduate Business Education

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Specialization: Finance & Operations

Undergraduate Engineering & Economics

University of Virginia

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Bachelor of Arts in Financial Economics

Insights

Perspectives on AI, business and technology.

Visit my Medium profile→

Let's talk about the problem you want to solve.

A business challenge, a new idea, or a more useful way to put AI to work — let's talk about what you have in mind.

Introductory Conversation

A 25-minute conversation about what you're working on and how I can help.

Request an intro call→

Prefer to write? Email me →·Connect on LinkedIn

Executive leadership & board opportunities: For discussions regarding executive leadership, board, or long-term operating roles, feel free to reach out directly via email or LinkedIn.