# Akshay Krishnaiah

> Akshay Krishnaiah is the San Francisco-based founder and CEO of Beem, previously known as Line, and a historical founder and CEO of Teller. A former PayPal Research Labs product leader, he describes spending more than a year driving Uber and Lyft to understand financially underserved consumers before building Beem.

- **Role:** Founder and CEO at Beem
- **Organizations:** Beem, Line Financial, Teller, Finterest, Inc., PayPal, eBay
- **From:** Bengaluru, India
- **Education:** MS, Management Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, PGDC, Entrepreneurship (as listed by Crunchbase), The University of Texas at Dallas, PGDC, FinTech (as listed by Crunchbase), MIT Media Lab, BE, Information Sciences and Engineering, Visvesvaraya Technological University, PGDC, Product Management (as listed by Crunchbase), Stanford University
- **Known for:** Led a winning GoCart team at the 2015 Money20/20 hackathon; the team also received the audience favourite distinction., Teller was one of three winners from more than 30 entrants at a Founders Space pitch competition., Line participated in the 2020 Techstars and Western Union accelerator.

## Career timeline

- **2015** — Led the GoCart team, one of the winners at the Money20/20 hackathon.
- **2017** — Identified as Teller founder and CEO; Teller won a Founders Space pitch competition.
- **2020** — Line joined the Techstars and Western Union accelerator class.
- **2021** — Consumer app launched in the fall, according to Krishnaiah.
- **2022** — Appeared on Startups for Good as Line founder and CEO.
- **2023** — Line was known as Beem; Krishnaiah discussed its AI strategy and customer inclusion.
- **2024** — Beem announced Beem Arcade with adjoe in September.

## Achievements

- Led a winning GoCart team at the 2015 Money20/20 hackathon; the team also received the audience favourite distinction.
- Teller was one of three winners from more than 30 entrants at a Founders Space pitch competition.
- Line participated in the 2020 Techstars and Western Union accelerator.
- Public biographies credit him with 75 consumer fintech patent publications; this is not a count of granted patents.

## Latest updates

- **2024-09** — Beem announced an in-app arcade in collaboration with adjoe.
- **2024-08** — Beem promoted Krishnaiah’s appearance on the Mass Appeal podcast discussing the company’s origins and growth.

## Links

- Website: https://about.me/akshayk
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/entrprenr/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/entrprenr

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/akshay-krishnaiah
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-27