Q2 2023

life news, startup updates, cool links, and pics from the last 3 months.

Jul 01, 2023

Updates 🗞️

Endings, beginnings, continuations… ay caramba! There’s been a lot going on in all directions in the past 3 months.

Last month, I finished my year at TKS. I enjoyed it immensely and can’t recommend it enough for highly driven 13-17 years olds. During the final months of the program, we were challenged to solve a global problem using emerging technologies. That’s a tough task for those who have years of experience under their belts and can leverage their lifetimes towards tackling these problems. We were given an internet connection and 4 weeks. Needless to say, my team got straight to work…

Introducing 🥁🥁🥁 UltraRice

Some facts: Over 220 million people in India are malnourished as of 2022. 50% of the world uses rice as a primary source of nutrition. Fixing this problem could not only increase India’s GDP by as much as 10%, but prevent premature deaths and help foster a longer-living, healthier population.

While ultrasonic treatment of food is still very new and studies just starting, results so far have been promising. Our team spent weeks researching, speaking with experts, and building our project. We prepared a 90s elevator pitch, 14-minute-long research article, and website.

Some validation: The COO of Action Against Hunger India offered to fly my entire team out to India to continue the project. We received expert validation from people working at the U.N. and hunger-focused non-profits. We even won 2/4 TKS Moonshot awards, one of which was created right then and there so we could be awarded “most implementable”. We had enough green flags to realize we were onto something 👀

Some progress: We’ve registered as a 501c3 non-profit. We’re speaking with funds and accelerator programs as we look to raise capital for a 1-year research period. We’re pursuing lab space at Purdue and McMasters and it’s looking promising since two of our team members have been accepted there (Congrats Prabhat and Anika 🎉).

If you or anyone you know gives non-dilutive grants to teams building things like UltraRice, please reply to this email!

In other news…

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(rewind sound effect because i’m getting creative with these newsletters 🔥)

6 months ago, I stumbled across a new startup on my timeline. Despite scrolling past hundreds of startups and projects every week, this one caught my eye. After doing some digging and poking around, I got the gist that they were building a place curation and discovery platform. You could bookmark your favorite cafes, restaurants, and landmarks across the globe, and share your lists with friends (and vice versa). As my family has been living from AirBnB-to-AirBnB over the past 4 years, staking out territory in various locales across North America and Europe, this was a very exciting discovery.

After fumbling my way past the waitlist (through what may have been a bug in their log-in) I started adding all my favorite spots. I managed to hold off for around a week until I broke down and sent the team a dm:

Long story long and seven months later, I’ve joined the team at Corner as an intern while I finish my last 6 months of high school! I genuinely could not be happier to be working with them on something I believe in so much. Crazy big things coming for Corner.

Corner’s tagline is “making the world a smaller place”. I think that’s exactly what we’re looking for in this day and age, when the internet can make the world feel so chaotic and weary. I’m a believer in Corner’s ability to reconnect us with what makes the world a beautiful place.

Deep breaths let’s speedrun some other news

Neesh made me a beautiful new website, you can admire it and share it with all your friends here.
Tejas hired a magnificent designer to work on some visuals for his new startup and I made a surprise appearance in V1 of a launch video.
I worked on an awesome house mix with my friend Alistair that you can listen to here.
I was invited to speak on Bush Radio, South Africa’s oldest radio station, to talk about teen entrepreneurship. You can listen to that here.

Numbers 📊

Buildergroop 🔨

5.1k+ members (13% increase)
1k+ visitors on Changelog (still in closed beta)
10k+ visitors on BuilderBook
In the process of dissolving the for-profit entity and becoming a 501c3 non-profit (!) more news coming soon

Photography Lounge 📸

12.3k+ members (17% increase)
5.8M+ messages (18% increase)
330k images sent (10% increase)

Links 👀

Must-watch shows and movies 🎞️

The Bear S2, Hulu

Living, Netflix

Ted Lasso S3, AppleTV

AIR, Amazon Prime

Top-notch links and resources 🔥

Failory

Microgrants

Incorporating, Banking, and Payroll Under 18, Changelog (by Dylan)

Should founders care about moats, Isiah Taylor

Scrapbook 🤳🏼

After living in a cute (and walkable 😍) town in Connecticut for 6 months, I’ve moved to Rhode Island. It’s windy, humid, sunny, and has great beaches. Providence is one of my all-time favorite cities, so it’s nice to be closer to it now. I’ve also been in and out of NYC a few times!