A Malaysian, Ariffin had lived and worked for the last two decades in North America but has recently crossed the oceans to return to Asia. Currently based in Kuala Lumpur, he is a man of many hats. The most recent ones being founder of Acquro Sdn Bhd, board member of OneMarket, Inc, former chief architect at Yahoo, speaker, and freelance business consultant.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 gave Ariffin his start in the tech world. A businessman at that time, he’d always had a fascination for computers, and the bleak economy prompted his move to the US to pursue computer science studies in California. Since then, Ariffin hasn’t looked back. His ten years of studying culminated in a doctorate in computer science in 2008. A first attempt at building a startup in 2006 failed which then led to a job at Yahoo as a search engineer. The former Silicon Valley giant was where Ariffin built his chops as a tech professional. Yahoo nurtured his talent in more ways than one, and with immeasurable hard work and positive encouragement from inspiring bosses and colleagues, he rose through the ranks to finally exiting as its Chief Architect in late 2017.

Now living away from Silicon Valley, Ariffin is building his own advisory leveraging the knowledge and experience gained over the last twenty years in the United States. As someone who never tires of doing the right thing, Ariffin still remains driven and aims to contribute to the tech world in every way possible.

Ariffin holds a Ph.D. in computer science from University of California, Irvine. He owns patents in systems and methods for advertising and monetization in location-based spatial networks, and has written numerous publications.