Overview

Gender

male

Tomi Poutanen is the Co-Founder and CTO of Milq.com, an online service providing a unique platform for people to discuss and curate music and other forms of cultural content. Prior to Milq, Tomi founded Optimized Search Algorithms, which was sold to Yahoo! where the technology improved Yahoo’s Web Search engine throughput. The IP is currently powering Bing’s Web Search ranking algorithm, materially reducing Bing’s operating costs and enabling more complex ranking functions. While completing his undergraduate degree at University of Waterloo, he co-founded Data Compression Technologies, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1996. Microsoft continues to use the technology to reduce the cost of software distribution and data storage. While employed at Yahoo, Tomi was the founder and GM of a search-engine related advertising business, Paid Inclusion, which grew to a $200M/yr business. He also served as the head of Yahoo’s International search operations, and he built Yahoo! Answers, the first and still leading online Q&A platform. Tomi holds an MASc in Computer Engineering and an MBA from University of Toronto.