Full Name Garo Mekikian Nationality American Years active 1993 — present | Residence La Canada, California Occupation CEO of M&M Media, Inc. | |
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Known for Technology and software entrepreneurship Board member of Chairman, M&M Media, Inc., Board of Advisors
Stanford Graduate School of Business MSx Program Alma maters Stanford University, University of Southern California | ||
Gary Mekikian is an American entrepreneur and investor who is the co-founder and CEO of M&M Media Inc., a Los Angeles-based media technology company. Prior to M&M Media, Mekikian also co-founded International Integration, Inc. also known as i-Cube; answerfriend, Inc., which became Inquira; and GATeIC, Inc.
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In addition to business ventures, Mekikian has been a member of Pasadena Angels and Tech Coast Angels, nonprofit organizations that offer consultation and seed capital to startup businesses from successful entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and business experts. Mekikian is a co-organizer of LA2DC.org, a Los Angeles-based organization whose mission is to raise awareness of modern-day genocides and to eliminate genocide as a war tactic.
Mekikian has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California and an MS from Stanford University, and he holds patents in media technologies and medical devices. Mekikian is a member of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business MSx Alumni Advisory Board. He collaborates with Stanford University professors Dr. William Barnett and Dr. John Roberts to write and teach case studies on entrepreneurship, information technology, semiconductor industry, and the mobile internet.
Education
After attending Hollywood High School for two years, Mekikian earned an electrical engineering degree from University of Southern California and an MS in business from Stanford University.
Early ventures
In 1993, after working at Hewlett-Packard Company as a sales engineer, Mekikian joined the founding team at the technology company International Integration Inc., also known as i-Cube, which went public in 1998. i-Cube was acquired by Razorfish, Inc. in 1999.
After the sale of i-Cube, Mekikian began working with Dr. Deniz Yuret, a researcher in Natural Language Processing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sundar Subramaniam, a co-founder of i-Cube, to found answerFriend, Inc., which developed commercialized web based question-answering technologies. The company and its flagship product were covered by The Wall Street Journal and CNN Money. In 2002, answerFriend merged with another natural language processing technology company, Electric Knowledge, to form InQuira. In 2011, Oracle Corporation acquired Inquira to add the company's knowledge management and self-service solutions to Oracle's Customer Relationship Management platform.
In 2006, Mekikian co-founded GATeIC, a semiconductor IP company, to develop algorithms and gate-level implementations for digital signal processing IC's commonly used in wireless base stations and other digital signal processing equipment. The company produced new IC designs that consumed less power than comparable IC's in the market, which were then licensed by semiconductor manufacturers like Maxim Integrated and Analog Devices.
M&M Media / Trebel Music
In 2014, two years after being awarded a patent on a new method of delivering and monetizing digital media on mobile and desktop devices, Mekikian teamed up with his daughters, Grace and Juliette Mekikian; his classmates from Stanford Business School, Adrian Sada Cueva and Ernesto Vargas; and colleagues Oscar De La Garza and Rodrigo Vargas; to co-found M&M Media, Inc., a digital music distribution company that released the Trebel Music app. The company's goal is to eliminate the forces that drive digital media piracy. The app is designed to reduce digital media piracy and deliver compensation to the artists by specifically targeting a demographic which uses piracy as a form of media acquisition.
Genocide Awareness and Prevention
In 2015, the descendants of the Armenian Genocide around the world commemorated the 100 anniversary of the first genocide of the 20th century. Mekikian, along with a group of American-Armenian professionals, organized an event called LA2DC, a coast-to-coast, running and cycling, relay marathon. The mission of the event is to increase awareness of modern day genocides, and to ask the US Congress and world powers to work together to stop genocides as a war tactic. Over a thousand athletes ran and cycled non-stop, from Los Angeles to Washington DC, to deliver a petition to Congress - a message of gratitude to Americans and others who worked to prevent genocides, and rescued the survivors. Mekikian and colleagues authored the petition which was delivered in a relay baton to Congressman Adam Schiff who read it on the floor of the House of Representatives on May 20, 2015.