I grew up in the Middle East, getting a first-hand view of human adaptability in the face of adversity and the influence of key decision-makers on the efficiency of a system. More than anything, I realized the value of actionable hope, or conversely, the destructive power of hopelessness.
After high school, I spent a gap year interning at non-profits in Israel, Tanzania, and South Africa. I learned about the ingenuity of those with limited resources, realized that I could actually get things done, and internalized the power of relationships as wiser people poured into me. This is when I made permanent the idea that people matter above all else.
At Stanford, I majored in MS&E (engineering core + finance) with a CS minor. I fell in love with the immediate feedback loop of programming and the brilliant ideas of legendary computer scientists. My favorite classes were about real estate finance, the mathematical foundations of CS, and the history of financial crises.
I spent time working in South Africa (last-mile grocery delivery startup) and Kenya (designing internal supply chain software for an agribusiness with a blockchain grant). I eventually met and starting working and learning under Alex Oppenheimer, an ex-NEA investor who gets in the weeds of financial modeling, teaches a SaaS biz-model masterclass, and runs his life out of Airtable.
After 3.5 years, I left the firm to work on my own startup, after a building feeling that I wanted to be in the thick of things.