Somik Raha grew up in India in a family that encouraged free-thinking and valued deep conversations. Because his family relocated multiple times across India, he was exposed to a diverse range of subcultures and philosophies. He has lived and worked in the West for over twenty years. Somik has been coding since he was twelve and immersing himself in Western and Eastern philosophies since he was fifteen. Enamored with artificial intelligence in his late teens, he eventually developed a keener interest in the hu- mans behind the technology. Over the next two decades, he honed this interest by tackling two age-old questions about prioritization: What should we focus on? How much should we invest in it?

Somik has engaged with these questions as an agile coach, a product leader, a decision analyst, and a curious student of life. He has a bachelor’s in computer science from Bangalore Institute of Technology and a master’s and PhD from the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. His dissertation was titled “Achieving Clarity on Value”; his book "Invaluable: Achieving Clarity on Value" is a continuation of his research. Somik lives with his wife and two children in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he actively explores the fascinating intersections between technology, philosophy, and the human experience.