Karim Varela

I build and scale product-led engineering teams that turn ambiguous ideas into revenue-generating platforms. My edge is bridging deep technical execution with tangible business outcome, across any industry from dating to fintech to travel to big data to ecomm to web3. My career has followed a single thread: using technology as leverage to unlock new forms of connection, expression, and commerce. I was an early engineer at Tinder, where I saw how product + data + design can change societal behavior at massive scale. As CTO of Coffee Meets Bagel, I helped grow the platform through hyper-growth, scaling teams and systems under real consumer load. Since then, I’ve repeatedly stepped into high-ambiguity environments as cofounder, CTO, and advisor where the job is not just to build, but to decide what should be built, and why. Today, I operate at the intersection of AI, marketplaces, and ecomm, leading teams and shipping systems that move real metrics: • Built and led engineering organizations from 3 → 50+ across multiple startups, owning architecture, hiring, culture, and delivery • Designed AI-driven recommendation and personalization systems (matching, content ranking, generative design pipelines) used by tens of thousands of users • Scaled revenue platforms to seven figures in GMV, supporting creator monetization, tokenized IP, and e-commerce infrastructure • Hands-on across the stack (TypeScript, Python, GraphQL, Postgres, pgvector, LLM pipelines, cloud infra), while also owning product strategy, roadmap, and execution I’m most effective in early-to-growth stage environments where speed, clarity, and systems thinking matter more than org charts. I’ve worn the hats of CTO, Head of Product, and cofounder, often simultaneously—because in early companies, those roles can’t be separated. What I’m open to: Advising roles at AI-first, consumer, or platform companies solving meaningful problems at scale.