Sinan Aral
Partner

Sinan Aral is the David Austin Professor of Management and Chair of the Marketing Department at MIT, where he holds joint Professorships at the Sloan School of Management and the Institute for Data, Systems and Society, and where he co-leads the Initiative on the Digital Economy. He was the Chief Scientist at SocialAmp, one of the earliest social commerce analytics companies (until its sale to Merkle in 2012) and at Humin, a social platform that the Wall Street Journal called the first “Social Operating System” (until its sale to Tinder in 2016). Sinan was the Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Times R&D Lab in 2013, is a scientific advisor to Ditto Labs and Cloudtags, and has worked closely with Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, SAP and many other leading Fortune 500 firms on realizing business value from big data analytics, social media and IT investments. 

Sinan is a leading expert on social networks, social media and digital strategy. His research has been published in top scientific journals such as Science and Nature, and he has won numerous awards including the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship, the PopTech Science Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Fulbright Scholarship and seven “Best Paper” awards. He is a founding organizer of the Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN) at NYU and the Conference on Digital Experimentation (CODE) at MIT, and was named one of the “World’s Top 40 Business School Professors Under 40” in 2014. 

Sinan is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University, holds Master’s degrees from the London School of Economics and Harvard University, and received his PhD from MIT. 

In his spare time, he cooks, skis and tells jokes about his own cooking and skiing. His most recent hobby is learning from his three-year-old son.
 

You can find Sinan on Twitter @sinanaral. 
 

To learn more about Sinan’s background, including recent awards and published and forthcoming papers, please visit his MIT bio Page. 
 

Eli Baker
Partner

Eli Baker is an experienced investor and fund manager with JV investment partnerships with major institutional investors. He focuses primarily on investment strategy, portfolio management and governance matters. 

Eli serves as Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Double Eagle Acquisition Corp., a $500 million special purpose acquisition company currently listed on the NASDAQ (EAGLU). Prior to Double Eagle, he was a director of Silver Eagle Acquisition Corp., another special purpose acquisition company that ultimately merged with Videocon d2h, the third largest Indian satellite television provider, in March 2015. 

He was also a founder and partner in Hemisphere Capital Management LLC, a special opportunity credit and equity fund specializing in media finance, where he deployed more than $300 million in debt and equity capital across four investment funds from 2009 - 2016. 

Previously, Eli served as a principal at Grosvenor Park Investors, a joint venture with Fortress Investment Group where he shared oversight over special opportunity credit and debt funds in the media space. 

Eli’s background is in law, and he has served in a legal affairs capacity at various companies in and out of the media and entertainment business, including Lionsgate/Artisan Entertainment, prior to which he practiced international commercial litigation. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a Juris Doctor from the University of California at Hastings Law School.