Abstract: 

If there’s one thing that COVID-19 has taught us, it’s that even while apart, collaboration and flexibility are key when it comes to the work we do and the relationships we build. The same goes with how we use data. In this new digital reset, companies must learn to turn away from data fragmentation and focus their efforts on shared Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enable teams to interact, innovate and learn from their existing products. After all, machine learning is integral to enhancing the customer experience.

Look at cars, banking, clothes, electronics, and now, housing. Because of these underlying macro trends around digitization, the availability of data, and the number of computing resources at your fingertips, there can be much more innovation in traditional industries with API. Rather than piecing together separate data, it’s important for companies to analyze customer experiences and identify digital opportunities to identify a collaborative end-to-end, digital, and on-demand experience by working together, not separately.

This is especially the case for the housing industry. By creating a smooth and collaborative tech ecosystem through data and machine learning, homeowners have the ability to have a simplified process during one of life’s biggest transactions. After all, buying or selling a home is one of the biggest milestones in a person’s lifetime, and the work Opendoor does is to help people across the U.S. achieve homeownership in a simpler, more certain, and faster way. This is done by making hundreds of data-driven decisions every day. At a time when some companies are still finicky about sharing their APIs, Kushal can take a stand against fragmented data and reveal insights—from tips on how to build stronger partnerships to how to encourage this approach internally at an organization—on how companies can collaborate for the betterment of the user experience.

Bio: 

Kushal is a proven data science leader, with 10+ years of experience in large-scale machine learning and data engineering (Amazon, Opendoor, UC Berkeley, etc.), 15+ years in leadership and 20+ patents and publications. He’s been named one of Seattle’s Top 40 People Under 40, Social Innovator of the Year and a TED Prize finalist. At Opendoor, Kushal oversees all of Opendoor’s pricing modeling, research and analytics efforts. His team works across product, engineering, operations and design, providing the actionable insights that enable us to serve our customers better and push forward the state of the art in pricing. In his free time, Kushal races Ironman triathlons, trains guide dogs and dabbles in photography. He lives in the Bay Area with his pediatrician wife, two daughters, 10-pound cat and 100-pound German Shepherd.