Shyam Rao is seasoned entrepreneur, executive, investor and advisor for several startups in Silicon Valley. He is Founder & CEO of Tote.ai, a new stealth seed-funded startup headquartered in Redwood City, CA. Prior to Tote.ai, he was the Founder and CEO of Punchh, a market leading CRM platform focused on delivering one-to-one customer engagement through artificial intelligence, mobile-first expertise, and omnichannel communications for restaurants and retailers. Punchh was acquired for $500M in April 2021 by PAR Technologies (nyse:PAR).

Prior to founding Punchh, Shyam was the Vice President of Business Development at Prime Focus Limited, and on the Principal Investments Team at Merrill Lynch. Shyam started his career at Motorola in its CDMA and WiMAX divisions as a software engineer. Mr. Rao holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto and a MBA from the University of Chicago. He lives with his wife and two boys in the San Francisco Bay Area.