# Vidya Narayanan

> Vidya Narayanan is a mobile engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded Rizzle and now serves as co-founder and CEO of FinalLayer. After working at Motorola, Qualcomm and Google, she built interactive short-video products and AI-assisted creator tools with Lakshminath Dondeti. Her public accounts explore audience growth, founder relationships and the experience of starting again.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at FinalLayer
- **Organizations:** FinalLayer, Rizzle, Google, Qualcomm, Motorola
- **Education:** Master’s in Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M University
- **Known for:** Approximately 75 issued patents reported in her public speaker biography., Built mobile research and engineering teams at Qualcomm and Google., Co-founded Rizzle; her August 2025 retrospective reports 80M downloads, 34M monthly active users and 500M+ videos created.

## Career timeline

- **1998** — Started engineering career at Motorola, working on early mobile architectures.
- **2007** — Built a context-aware research team at Qualcomm, according to her 2020 interview.
- **—** — Led Android always-on location and context engineering at Google.
- **2015** — Left Google to pursue entrepreneurship, according to her November 2025 retrospective.
- **2019** — Co-founded and launched Rizzle with Lakshminath Dondeti.
- **2023** — Rizzle shifted toward AI video creation; she announced commercial availability in October.
- **2024** — Replaced as Rizzle CEO, according to her November 2025 account.
- **2025** — Building FinalLayer with Dondeti; subsequently identified publicly as its co-founder and CEO.

## Achievements

- Approximately 75 issued patents reported in her public speaker biography.
- Built mobile research and engineering teams at Qualcomm and Google.
- Co-founded Rizzle; her August 2025 retrospective reports 80M downloads, 34M monthly active users and 500M+ videos created.
- FinalLayer investor Beyond Next Ventures reported 10,000 users within ten weeks of launch.

## Latest updates

- **2026-08** — Published a LinkedIn article titled “Most slop dies unseen. On LinkedIn, it finds you.”
- **2026-06** — Published a LinkedIn article about attention and impressions on the platform.
- **2025-11** — Published personal accounts of leaving Rizzle, founder ownership and maintaining investor relationships while building FinalLayer.

## Links

- Website: https://hellovidya.substack.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hellovidya
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/hellovidya
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellovidya
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hellovidya

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/vidya-narayanan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-09