Irina Kukuyeva, PhD
AI diligence
at Kukuyeva Consulting
Dr. Irina Kukuyeva is a business operations-focused technology leader who helps companies understand and unlock customer behavior and feedback loops to build scalable, profitable companies with market fit.
She has collaborated with over 100 companies and is a frequent speaker on the topic of building and scaling companies with product-led growth and AI, most recently for Slauson & Co.
She’s invented and implemented algorithms on a global scale, led global data and AI teams, and taught graduate students best practices for developing real-time AI algorithms.
Irina mentors over 100 start-ups a year at many accelerators, including Techstars, the Founder Institute, and the UCLA Venture Accelerator.
She is an advisory board member for a pediatric MedTech accelerator (CTIP) and the UCLA Master of Data Science program.
She holds a PhD in Statistics from UCLA, where she invented a novel image compression algorithm for her PhD thesis — and found similarities between two storms on Jupiter, a finding confirmed by NASA Juno’s mission years later. It is now a special case of the many popular AI models today.
Articles by Irina Kukuyeva, PhD

How To Identify Key Product Metrics To Unlock Value For Product-Led Startups with David Jesse
In this Mucker Growth Session, David Jesse, Senior Product Advisor & Coach at Prodify with prior product leadership experience at DoorDash, Groupon, and eBay, focuses on aligning your product metrics...

Managing Complex B2B Sales Motions for Startup Founder-Led Sales with Luke Welch
In this Mucker Growth Session, Luke Welch, owner of Luke Welch GTM Consulting and former VP of Global Marketing Solution Sales at Salesforce, focuses on the challenges and best practices...

How to Kickstart Content Marketing at Early-Stage Companies with Dennis Shiao
In this Mucker Growth Session, Dennis Shiao, founder of marketing agency Attention Retention, walks through how to make an impact with content marketing even when you have limited budget and...

How to Improve Your Team’s Performance and Prevent Burnout with Glenn Gow
In this Mucker Growth Session, CEO coach Glenn Gow discusses improving your team’s performance and preventing burnout. PDF of Glenn’s presentation slides Right Now, Things are Hard On any given...

Finance 101 for Early Stage Startup Founders with Debbie Rosler
In this Mucker Growth Session, Debbie Rosler from Burkland dives into the fundamental financial best practices and infrastructure early -stage startups need to put in place. Finance 101: Why Should...

Engineering Customer & Product Feedback Loops with Holden Munson & Sofia Maravich
In this Mucker Growth session, Holden Munson and Sofia Maravich from Rethink Labs, explore how to develop a useful system of collecting customer data and integrating it into your team....