at 12, my first side hustle was designing Minecraft game assets + posting them on youtube. i ended up with 4+ million downloads of my work and 1.3 million Youtube views.

youtube and minecraft both led me to a hobby of designing typographic posters. i had no clue how this would shape my future. i just thought it was fun!

one day in high school, a friend of mine told me to explore web. it changed everything.

then, after some freelance gigs, I got frustrated with lacking full creative control on how websites looked and functioned. this led me to study CS at Georgia Tech.

before college, a group of friends and I wanted to help our community during the peak of covid. we built six feet supplies, which delivered over $50k worth of urgent supplies to over 20k people. this taught me the ability to impact people through software, and the effects of scale.

building that project enabled me to explore and solidify my own career aspirations. to give back, I wanted to help other students in my community to explore their path, most of whom are the first in their family to pursue a 4-year degree. in response, I built pathways.me for high school students, aiming to close information gaps associated with discovering and pursuing careers.

pathways.me became my proudest creation up to that point. I even channeled that passion into teaching design, project ideation, and branding to high school students.

i found true fulfillment in wanting to help the next generation, and to close systemic gaps for others to succeed.

except, the road ahead to build in edtech seemed daunting and had endless variables out of my control...

disheartened, I went to Georgia Tech to explore other interests, with the hope of eventually coming back to education. beyond CS, I studied Industrial Design and Cognitive Psychology.

i joined a research lab on campus, interned at startups and big companies, and even explored other interests like growth & photography. i even had the chance to take photos for LeBron James Jr., NLE Choppa, Vic Blends, Georgia Tech's Football Team, and more.

by junior year in college, I felt experienced but unfulfilled. I felt lost in my pursuit of the original goal to build software and help people.

to join the dialog, I got involved on tech twitter, meeting ambitious people and learning about the problems they were solving.

this led me to work on musicfy, an ai music platform with over 5m users, crayo, an ai short-form content generation platform (went from 0 → 2m users), with over 50k users in the first month; and sellraze, a mobile app that allows you to sell anything online with just a picture.

musicfy took advantage of the noise around AI music after GPT launched. the hook was simple: sing like your favorite artist. crayo gave me the opportunity to design a product alongside the two largest names in the clipping space. sellraze granted a ton of insight into the pain-points in e-commerce, as well as the longterm challenges of building in the space. those ingredients eventually came in handy for my latest role.

this chapter allowed me to fully support myself while navigating financial struggles back home. i avoided an eviction notice and overcame over $30,000 of credit card debt.

i learned a lot. and did a lot. each role had its own responsibilities and learnings. each team hit 7-figures ARR. i was building the set of tools i needed to design, build, and scale anything.

in parallel, I wanted to find like-minded peers, and to help them pursue their most ambitious, creative visions. this led me to start a nonprofit called startup exchange, which enables college students to develop the self-awareness, goals, & mindset needed to build startups and pursue the untraditional path.

over 50k students at over 40 universities have attended a startup exchange event since fall 2022. we had dozens of partners (the City of Atlanta, Google, Nvidia, Meta, 50+ more), flew out investors from SF, curated the first AI and XR hackathons in Atlanta, and raised over $150,000.

i even became a finalist for Mr. Georgia Tech and got recognized by the city because of sx. i felt so honored to be in a position to amplify the community and their stories.

my close friend vik and I traveled across the US to host sx events. we wanted to build a movement, a culture of finding yourself and finding your people during the insanely long, intimidating journey of building something.

building sx gave me so much fulfillment and joy. but despite everything, i still hadn't returned to my original passion — building for education.

to start over, I decided to pursue a masters at Stanford.

stanford enabled me to tap back into my deepest passions — learning and helping others learn. I took classes from world-class professors, met exceptionally bright people, and lived on a campus that felt like heaven on earth.

things changed pretty quickly for me when I had the unique opportunity to build Phia and to redefine the shopping category in consumer. previously, i contemplated an app studio, or to quickly build and scale consumer apps for quick gains. but i wanted something bigger.

so, i logged over 60 flights in 2025 to fly back and forth between NY and SF, committing to building Phia while I finished my degree. i have since graduated, and the story continues to be written.

today, i approach work as a swiss-army knife.

i pry deep into an end-user's feelings and emotions, and take note of what is said and not said. i take my ideas and spread them around Figma like an open canvas, and converge concepts while taking light inspiration from proven concepts. i obsess over the details through frontend and Swift development. i analyze funnel data & event logging for gaps and opportunities.

to be continued!