LET'S TALK ABOUT TECHNOLOGY
- augmented reality systems and applications
- marketing technology (or 'martech')
- quantum computing
- cloud computing
- edge computing
- AI/ML
- IoT
- 'industry 4.0'
- quantum key distribution
- defense
- biotechnology, and microbiome applications
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From early childhood, I demonstrated a propensity and desire to innovate. My hobbies as a child were chess, and Legos. While Legos are accompanied with instructions, I would never use them, either opting to figure it out myself, or engineer my own creation. As I matured, those qualities evolved into an analytical, autodidactic perspective which sought to understand the mechanics of countless topics — with a particular emphasis placed on those the least studied, the cutting edge, and where I saw the most potential for impact. Those qualities, coupled with my creativity, developed my entrepreneurial perspective which constantly sought to understand new technologies, identify new applications, or envision ways to improve existing systems.
During my freshman year of highschool, I had saved up $1,000, but sought a more effective way to invest it than the stock market. Eventually, I stumbled upon bitcoin and bitcoin mining. From there I went to join a program known as the Young Entrepreneur’s Academy which provided mentors, guidance, and various means of assistance to help aspiring entrepreneurs. During that program, I developed the concept for my first business — Bitquity. The underlying premise of Bitquity was to allow individuals to purchase ‘shares’ of specialized bitcoin mining computers. This afforded my users a better potential ROI than incumbent cloud-mining companies, as well as a lower barrier of entry in terms of capital investment and technical understanding. The year was 2013, bitcoin had an exchange rate of $50/BTC. At the time, bitcoin mining was conducted using GPUs and other non-specific technologies. That winter, the first specialized bitcoin miners known as ASICs, or application specific integrated circuits, were soon to be released to market. These ASICs offered tremendously greater computational power for bitcoin mining, otherwise known as hashing power, than anything else on the market. I raised enough money to purchase one for myself, and 3 others were purchased by interested parties. These specific ASICs were CoinTerra TerraMiners which boasted 2TH/s (terra hashes per second), immensely powerful for the time, and were as loud as vacuum cleaners. Approximately upwards of 16 bitcoin were mined within a matter of months, which these days would be worth just shy of a $1M. While operating Bitquity, I had gone on to win a number of business competitions. Out of these, the most impactful was the Young Entrepreneurs Academy’s investor pitch competition. While raising an amount of money from it to put towards Bitquity, I more importantly was approached by the founder of both Blackboard and Modernizing Medicine, who extended me an internship at his present company. I worked there for a lengthy time in highschool, and to this date remain the only highschool student to have worked there.
To wrap up my time in highschool, I completed a certification as a biotechnician assistant after completing a 4 year biotech program, and first begun taking an interest in quantum computing.
I attended Northeastern University’s Honors College under scholarship where I dual majored in entrepreneurship and marketing. While I was highly occupied with school, I still continued to work on new business ideas, as well as my own, personal research. Around this time, I first begun methodically journaling daily, recording all my business ideas, and maintained many other lists throughout those years to now encompass a significant amount of material. I consider this one of the most important practices I implemented. During my time at Northeastern, I worked for the Epstein Lab which is responsible for discovering a new antibiotic — Teixobactin. Following that, I worked for Fluid-Screen, a life-science startup, where I furthered my knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry, microbiome applications, microfluidics, and concepts surrounding the idea of a ‘lab-on-a-chip’. I personally found the underlying technology fascinating, and constantly would propose new markets and applications for it.
During my time at Fluid-Screen, I was also working on my 2nd business focused on a product known as the ‘RipGrip’. Within a period of only a few months from first envisioning the idea, I had units being manufactured in China, and quickly scaled the company to eventually generating thousands in revenue per month due to effective SEO strategies and briefly making the product a viral phenomena. After selling the company, IP, and finishing my time at Fluid-Screen, I briefly returned to school before beginning to work at Converge venture capital. Converge was an exceptional place to work, where I learned a significant amount regarding venture capital, emerging technologies, methodologies for evaluation, and substantially more. I was fortunate to have Maia Heymann, Nilanjana Bhowmik, James Falkoff, and Jason King as mentors.
The knowledge & experience I derived from working in venture capital at Converge has benefitted me in many ways, namely refining my perspective for business strategy further. My various experiences in their totality have yielded many lessons, insights, and have shaped who I am and how I think as an entrepreneur. Now, I am putting those lessons, ideas, strategies, my penchant for analytical and creative thought, coupled with my unyielding volition, into full implementation with my company Future Optek. I have self-funded this venture, brought together a skilled team, conceived the underlying IP, scaled it in a lean fashion, and am preparing to enter full commercialization of Future Optek’s augmented reality devices. I have done so without a job, pandemic or unemployment benefits, solely funding it through my savings & investments, working typically 16 hours a day — which is what I mean by unyielding volition — unequivocal, total commitment. I do this not only because of my substantiated confidence in Future Optek and its products, but also because I have a greater vision, for both Future Optek, and what I will pursue in the future. As my interests aren’t solely confined to augmented reality, I have further technologies, businesses, and ambitions that will be realized as I scale both Future Optek, in addition to my own capacity to fund these important, impactful pursuits. Our first product made the most sense in terms of R&D & capital requirements, the market size, and the impact it will have on the aforementioned market — as the technology and product supersedes anything else commercially available across all metrics. I believe the technological capabilities underlying Future Optek’s product presents extraordinary potential to impact various markets, industries, and people, with our current patents only addressing a handful. However, while Future Optek is not the first to employ such technology — current market incumbents have made this revolutionary technology consumer prohibitive due to their prices, have failed to identify or clearly convey a number of use-cases and applications which in turn has limited adoption amongst businesses and other organizations, and instead opted to pursue a ‘one-size-fits’ all model building inexcusably expensive products, packed with all the most cutting edge components and features — besides those people and businesses need. Future Optek has taken a different route — we focus on the immediate needs of the user, and build our augmented reality devices from the ground up to accommodate those needs while also keeping prices at an accessible, and acceptable level. I have many ambitions, but I hope Future Optek’s products and efforts empower more people with the capabilities of augmented reality, and allows those to enjoy the benefits of the technology without affordability limiting them. I believe the products Future Optek is developing will benefit the lives of many, provide greater affordability and access to existing, cutting edge technology to people and businesses across all ranges of income, end exclusionary pricing in the augmented reality market, and bring proliferation and ubiquity to augmented reality’s usage.
