I grew up in a rural farm town with few opportunities. There were significant socioeconomic challenges, including drugs, crime, and gangs, which taught me how to be street smart.
Through sheer willpower (and sleeping 4 hours a night), I received perfect scores on almost every standardized exam I took, and made it to Princeton University - the first Ivy League acceptance from my high school.
At Princeton, I pushed myself intellectually. I took the hardest courses available, interned on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley and the Rothschild/Rockefeller family office, and had a clear career on Wall Street ahead of me.
I turned it all down to join the US Marine Corps as an Officer. In my childhood town with so few opportunities, the US military was the common career path for most. I felt it was important to give back. I believe that the greatest leaders are those who are willing to sacrifice their own ambitions for the good of others.
I was unfortunately injured in both legs during training, which kick-started a long road of surgeries and recovery.
In spite of this, I eventually entered Tech, working in various Finance, Strategy, and Generalist roles. One of the most pivotal stretches included a company called Skan.ai, where I was an early employee working on nascent AI products before AI became the hottest thing on the block. I learned the ins and outs of every function in a company, with the end goal of eventually starting my own business.
In 2024, I began to realize that while everyone focused on the foundational models themselves, very few were aware of the actual business problems that businesses were facing on a day-to-day basis. This problem space was laden with applications for AI that most researchers were probably completely unaware of. As one of the first people in the world that had AI product experience, I was in a prime position to bring my knowledge to industry to seek out more specific applications.
What's more, I realized that the reason so many startups look the same is because the founders are all copy-pasted versions of each other. There is little differentiation in backgrounds, life experience, or outlook, and that's why there is no alpha in the vast majority of these companies.
In 2024, I found my chance: an opportunity arose to lead a 40 year old, well-known driving school (baycitiesdrivingschool.com) as CEO. Since I took over, the company has grown significantly, and is currently the largest driving school in the Bay Area. We are one of the first ever AI roll-ups, and have built a ton of cool tech behind the scenes.
From my experience at Bay Cities, I discovered several specific applications for AI. I built them for the business, observed, and iterated. From this, several projects were born, but the project I'm hyper-focused on is HireNewTalent.ai, an AI-driven marketplace that helps you find, hire, and pay global talent in any country, instantly.
And that brings me here today. I won't pitch you on why I'm working on this and why I think it's a generational idea (let's save that for another day), but I think this gives you a pretty good sense of who I am and how I've gotten here.
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