Danny Castonguay

Product leader.

About Me

I’m a co-founder of bld.ai and Kalibrr.com, a former McKinsey Expert Associate Partner, and father of three. I exercise everyday and I don’t compromise on sleep, nutrition, and meditation/relaxation. I challenge my teams, I create accountability structure, and I give a lot of (tough) love.

Tools I like to use include: Gitlab, Descript, and Figma.

I am most skilled in: Business, Product Management, and Team Health.

Experience

bld.ai | talented.app

www.bld.ai

Founder

2018 - Present

We build AI and web3 products that you own. Together we will assess the business opportunity, connect the data sources, walk the shop floor, select the appropriate algorithms, design the user experience, develop the front-end and back-end software, work with you to drive adoption, and long term perform maintenance and support.

I co-founded the company with the purpose to educate millions of people how to build, operate, maintain and support AI and web3 products. We employ global teams of Data Scientists, Front-End and Back-End Engineers, and UX/UI Designers in the US, Asia, and the Middle East to provide an affordable solution and quick resource availability. We value speed, transparency, and security. We believe in small teams of 3-7 people who work together quickly to deploy features and improve functionality. Full transparency is accomplished through daily work logs and 24-7 access to Product Managers. Data security is of the utmost importance. Finally, all IP we create is the sole property of our clients or open sourced.

McKinsey & Company

mckinsey.com

Expert Associate Partner

2007 - 2010, 2013 - 2017

McKinsey & Company is the trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world's most influential businesses and institutions.

I served companies in several industries, including railroads, mining, refining, oil & gas (upstream and downstream), electricity production and distribution, banking, retail, and non-profits. My lead role consisted in scoping, building and deploying software solutions (machine learning, mobile apps, data pipelines) and crafting executive communication. For example, a scheduling tool I built saved a logistics company several hundred millions of dollars annually in fuel, crews and equipment. I was also an internal faculty to teach machine learning to other consultants and I led an initiative to connect with academics on topics such as deep learning, reinforcement learning, quantum computing, game theory, and robust optimization.

Kalibrr

kalibrr.com

Co-Founder, CTO

2012 - 2013

Kalibrr helps people get hired at the best companies in Southeast Asia, with 2M+ users, 800+ companies, and 66,000+ hires in 2018. Raised $5M, including Y-Combinator.

I built the engineering and design team and led product management for the talent marketplace. Went from 0 to 100K users in less than 12 months.

MIT | UP Diliman

https://gsl.mit.edu/

Instructor | Adjunct Professor

2012 - 2013

MIT GSL trains and funds top MIT students and alumni to conduct technology incubator courses globally.

I led 100+ undergrad/grad students through two semesters. I created the curiculum for an intensive course going from idea generation to rapid prototyping and user testing. I organized hackathons and investor presentations. Two teams presented at Google Developers Day.

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MBA

2011 - 2013

Awarded a $50,000 fellowship by the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship.

During my time at MIT, I took classes such as Linked Data Ventures with Tim Berners-Lee, Sustainability with Jason Jay, Macro-econ with Roberto Rigobon, and Robust Optimization with Dimitris Bertsimas. I also co-founded Kalibrr and joined Y-Combinator during my last semester.

McGill University

Undergrad and Master of Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering

2001 - 2006

Awarded both provincial scholarship by the FQRNT, and federal scholarship by the NSERC.

As an Undergrad I took several graduate level courses such as Articifial Intelligence, Random Processes, Human Computer Interface, Game Theory, and Quantum Cryptography. I completed a Master’s Thesis under Shie Mannor, the (then) Canadian Chair of Machine Learning.

A Little More About Me

Alongside my interests in technology, design, sustainability, education, and finance, some of my other interests and hobbies are:

  • Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, Yoga
  • Meditation
  • Card, board, and video games