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David Ting

Chief Technology Officer/Founder

David Ting is the Chief Technology Officer at Zenni Optical, a position he has held since June 2022.1 He is a seasoned executive with a strong background in technology and product innovation.

Professional Experience

Prior to joining Zenni Optical, David held several notable positions:

  • VP of Engineering at DataVisor (2017-2019)
  • VP of Engineering at IGN Entertainment (2009-2011)
  • Director of Engineering, Music at Yahoo (2007-2009)
  • Senior Director of Engineering at Entriq (2004-2007)
  • Director of Engineering at Movielink (2002-2004)
  • Director of Web Development at AltaVista (1997-2000)

Expertise and Achievements

David excels at transforming personal passion into successful products.1 At Zenni Optical, he is focused on making high-quality eyewear accessible to everyone worldwide and disrupting an industry dominated by monopolies through product innovation and technology.1

Throughout his career, David has demonstrated expertise in various areas:

  • Big data and security solutions
  • Machine learning for fraud detection
  • Online gaming and entertainment platforms
  • Music and media cloud services
  • Video-on-demand technology
  • E-commerce and web development

Personal Interests

David's Twitter profile (@dting888) indicates that he is interested in technology, AI/Machine Learning, business, music, video games, and sports.2

In his role at Zenni Optical, David is leveraging his extensive experience in technology and product development to drive innovation in the eyewear industry.

Highlights

Jul 16 · linkedin

I enjoyed attending and speaking at #TheLeadsSummit last week in New York City. The topic is "Next-Level Personalization & Discovery Through Generative AI," with Richard Kestenbaum as our masterful moderator and James Reinhart from ThredUp as my co-panelist. I enjoyed chatting with Richard extensively for over an hour before the event in preparation for the session. I had the opportunity to represent Zenni Optical to discuss how we leverage technology as a D2C brand to offer eyewear at an average of five times the discount of a typical optical store purchase for the same product. By being data first and automating with AI, we were able to double EBITDA from 2022 to 2023 and have incredible year-over-year growth simultaneously. Here are some of my viewpoints:

  1. The world is changing more and more rapidly with the advent of Generative AI and the usage of different forms of AI to automate work. Brands need to adapt at lightning speed to survive or be disrupted, as loyalty to a brand will diminish over time. In the age of AI, brands could be launched quickly and affordably, lowering the barrier to entry. Customers will care more about the core services and value proposition. Because consumers will be better informed, it is best to be authentic and relentless in pursuing the perfect user experience.
  2. Technology leaders need to transform into business leaders. At Zenni, all technology projects have a business impact target with an average ROI of 10x over the lifetime of the initial cost. We see technology as an enabler that reduces business complexity and allows the business to adapt to the changing market at the speed of light.
  3. Instead of fighting against AI, I firmly believe that Generative AI levels the playing field and allows the most creative humans to rise from the norm. You now have an assistant/tool that gives you the knowledge of a college education with any topic at your fingertips. At Zenni, we consider this an opportunity to reinvent the organization to best service the customer in the most expedient, high-quality, and low-cost possible way.
  4. Ten years from now, AI will be considered the most disruptive technology invented, maybe greater than the Internet. Looking back, how many businesses survive today without adopting the Internet as a channel?
  5. Instead of worrying about how AI changes society today, we should look at redeploying resources that move humanity forward. Can we solve the pollution/global warming problems rapidly threatening our existence? Energy? Disease/sickness? Civilization started when we changed from hunter/gathers to farmers. The age of AI is another giant opportunity to move our society forward.

For more on the session, please refer to Jeffrey Mard's post: https://lnkd.in/gpfVT-i8

Jun 13 · linkedin

This is my 8th year attending the Databricks #dataaisummit, and I always look forward to the keynote session every year. 2024 is the best year yet. Here are the six most significant highlights for me.

  1. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts that Customer Service is the biggest AI use case for the coming years
  2. The rise of open-source LLM models, whose performance is catching up to proprietary models such as GPT 4.0.
  3. Fei-Fei Li discusses the Spatial Intelligence and its relevance for robotics
  4. Databricks is now 100% serverless
  5. Databricks AI/BI Analytics with the combination of Genie makes creating an intelligent dashboard a lot easier and diving into the data more accessible to non-data analysts within companies
  6. The improvement of DBSQL performance over the last three years by almost 4x.

I applaud the amazing technical achievement of the past year and can't wait to leverage some of these technical breakthroughs at Zenni Optical. I am so glad I can be part of this event with the Zenni team of Julie Chen, Ivy C., Jim Liu, Ph.D., CPA, and Mohammed Khursheed.

Related Questions

What are David Ting's main responsibilities at Zenni Optical?
How did David Ting's experience at Imprivata prepare him for his role at Zenni Optical?
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What challenges has David Ting faced in his career, and how did he overcome them?
David Ting
David Ting, photo 1
David Ting, photo 2
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Experience

CTO/Founder of Tausight
Co-founder and Director at Imprivata

Education

M.Eng in Electrical Engineering from McGill University (1974 - 1976), B.Eng from McGill University (1968 - 1973)

Location

San Mateo, California, United States