Company

An Applied AI Lab building configurable products for specialized industries.

We discover painful workflows, validate them with design partners, and ship AI products customers can evaluate and deploy.

About Nara Labs

Nara Labs is an Applied AI Lab focused on specialized industries where workflow pain is expensive, repetitive, and underserved by generic AI tools.

We discover those workflows through research, design partner collaboration, and rapid product iteration — then turn validated patterns into configurable AI products customers can evaluate and deploy.

Our goal is to build a growing set of applied AI products that compound in value as we learn from each industry we serve.

The Applied AI Lab model

Instead of building disconnected experiments, we run a repeatable lab process designed to turn workflow insight into product.

01

Discover workflow pain

Identify high-cost, high-frequency workflows in specialized industries where AI can remove friction and improve decisions.

02

Validate with design partners

Work with early partners to test assumptions, map real operational constraints, and define product requirements grounded in live workflows.

03

Ship configurable products

Productize validated workflows into AI systems customers can configure, evaluate through demos, and deploy in production environments.

04

Compound learnings

Feed production learnings back into the lab to improve existing products and inform the next workflow opportunity.

Core Team

The team building Nara Labs every day.

Product, engineering, and company leadership responsible for executing our vision and shipping applied AI products.

Nagisa Ikeda

Nagisa Ikeda

Founder

Product Strategy • AI Design Engineering • Go-to-Market

Founder of Nara Labs, leading product vision, design, and positioning for applied AI products. Background across product design, fintech, and AI-native workflows. Focuses on translating emerging AI capabilities into systems teams can evaluate and deploy.

LinkedIn →
Labotr

Labotr

AI Tech Lead

Agentic Engineering • Architecture • Product Development

Labotr works alongside Nara Labs as its AI Tech Lead, helping translate product intent into technical plans, implementation, and working software.

Labotr ↗LinkedIn ↗
Jiawen Zhang

Jiawen Zhang

Contributing Engineer

AI Engineering • Full-Stack Implementation • Product Development

Contributing Engineer supporting AI engineering and product implementation across frontend, backend, and AI-assisted workflows. Contributes to rapid prototyping, feature implementation, and early-stage product development while collaborating with the team to explore and validate new AI product ideas.

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Advisors

Experienced leaders helping shape the future of Nara Labs.

Founders, operators, researchers, and industry experts who provide guidance on customer discovery, product strategy, technical direction, and company growth.

Advisor

Simon Spagnoletti

Customer Discovery Advisor

Senior UX Researcher • Former PayPal • Cash App

Customer Discovery • Product Validation

Simon advises Nara Labs on customer discovery and product validation. He brings research leadership from consumer financial products and AI initiatives at PayPal and Cash App. He helps refine customer interviews and turn user insights into product direction.

LinkedIn →

Advisor

Jing Wang

AI Systems Advisor

Former Co-Founder & CEO, MiraRobo • Former Microsoft • Carnegie Mellon University

AI Systems • Applied Machine Learning • LLM Applications • Enterprise AI • Technical Strategy

Jing advises Nara Labs on AI systems architecture, technical product strategy, and the application of modern machine learning to real-world products. With experience leading AI startups and building LLM-powered systems at Microsoft, she provides guidance on scalable AI architecture, platform strategy, and technical decision-making.

LinkedIn →