Dr. Avery Wang (Co-Founder of Shazam, Principal Research Scientist at Apple)

In this episode, Dr. Avery Wang, founder of Shazam and nowadays Principal Research Scientist at Apple, is our guest.

Avery co-founded Shazam, invented the ground-breaking algorithm behind the music identification app and served as a Chief Scientist for the following 18 years until Shazam was acquired by Apple for a reported 400 million dollars. 

Avery graduated with four Mathematics and Electrical Engineering degrees from Stanford, conducted neuroscientific research on a Fulbright grant at the Ruhruniversität Bochum in Germany from 1990 to 1992, before then finding his way into Silicon Valley's startup scene.

We talk about his path and find out about the moonshot problem he faced at Shazam, his responsiblity in the founding team, how he struggled with it, and how he eventually solved it with an algorithm that has been used 70 billion times since he invented it.

Interviewed by Mohamed Kari (mkari.de).