Welcoming Mahesh Guruswamy, Kickstarter's New CTO

Today, we're thrilled to announce Mahesh Guruswamy as Kickstarter’s new Chief Technology Officer.  Mahesh joins the Kickstarter team this week and will report to our CEO, Everette Taylor.

As Kickstarter’s CTO, Mahesh will oversee our product and technical vision. He will be responsible for defining a path to reach our short and long-term product and engineering goals and driving an innovative and sophisticated approach to our product development efforts. 

Mahesh comes with over 20 years of experience in the software development space and a proven track record for building and managing high-performance, customer-minded teams. 

Most recently, Mahesh was the Head of Engineering at Mosaic, a strategic finance platform. As Mosaic’s Head of Engineering, he spearheaded initiatives to optimize the engineering team's performance and foster a culture of continuous improvement. Under his leadership, the team significantly enhanced their agility and speed to market, streamlined incident response processes, and improved operations overall.

Prior to Mosaic, Mahesh was the Chief Technology Officer at Kajabi, a platform designed to help creators and entrepreneurs create, sell, manage and grow their business online. Mahesh worked closely with Kajabi’s product teams to deliver key functionality like live video, coaching features and others that helped cement Kajabi’s top spot as a tool for creators. While there, he also helped to more than double the size of the engineering team and established a developer productivity organization that helped increase efficiency and productivity. 

Mahesh has also held various executive and leadership roles at Smartsheet, Alexa/Amazon, HMH, Fidelity Investments, and Vanguard.

Reflecting on his new role at Kickstarter, Mahesh shared, “I am passionate about serving creators and I believe in a world where creators can bring their creativity to life without sacrificing their creative rights and creative freedom. I am equally passionate about building business-minded, high-performing product development teams without sacrificing empathy. I’m eager to join Kickstarter because I believe the spirit of the brand will allow me to do both successfully. I’m excited to join the team.” 

Everette Taylor, CEO of Kickstarter, added, “To make an even greater impact on the creator community and the world around us, we need to innovate. As we push to develop more features that cater to our core community needs and push ourselves to innovate beyond what we know crowdfunding is today, Mahesh is – without a doubt – the right person to oversee the technology that powers our platform. With his extensive experience, particularly as the former CTO of Kajabi, a standout company in the creator economy, Mahesh comes with invaluable insight into supporting creators and their communities. Kickstarter is gaining an empathetic leader who is truly aligned with our values and mission. I'm excited to see the new horizons Mahesh, alongside our product and engineering teams, will unveil for Kickstarter.”

Please join us in welcoming Mahesh!