I’m a problem solver, engineering leader, and lifelong adventurer, equally at home building things or
exploring the world’s edges.
As a second-generation Chinese-American mostly raised in Maryland, I now live in Bellevue, Washington with my wife and our Australian Shepherd.
I grew up on blue crabs & Old Bay, loyalty to New England sports (thanks to being born in Rhode Island), and an enduring curiosity for how things work. This led me to Carnegie Mellon University, where I graduated at 20 with dual degrees in Computer Science and Economics, two passions that continue to shape how I think and build.
[Click to expand bio]
I began programming when I discovered TI Basic and Assembly on my calculator in middle school and this quickly became more interesting than most of my classes. Fortunately, many of my teachers were ok with this and actually encouraged me to explore this, even if it meant my math homework for the night would eventually reduce to pressing a couple of buttons on the calculator.
I hope to inspire people around me in the same way those teachers and mentors did for me.
I started my software engineering career as an intern at Facebook pre-IPO in 2011. During that summer, I worked on the first version of Timeline (aka the Facebook profile) and tried to absorb as much as I could. I was lucky to witness how a technology company made bets that would shape our world in the years that followed.
A year later, I started working on Windows user experience at Microsoft, first as an intern and then as a full time employee. My projects included the first run experience, the retail demo experience, and enabling ads in Windows as part of a transition to a free Windows business model. This provided me experience building product across the full stack from OS kernel to making things look nice in web browsers.
After putting ads in the start menu (yes, that was me) dampened my spirits, I decided to look for something completely different and that's when I dove into the startup world with Karat. I joined as the 2nd engineer and 8th overall employee and helped to build the Karat platform, invent interview engineering (interview methodology, questions, evaluation), and handle anything else that came up as one does at a startup. Over the course of five years, I wore many hats including late-night coding, hiring, product management, and people management. My proudest accomplishment was helping to build a team that can sustain itself successfully beyond my day-to-day tenure.
I then took a role at Assurance IQ, an insurtech company based out of Seattle. I joined post-acquisition to help build out the mortgage/personal loans business during COVID-era interest rates. By the end, I was accountable for our lead generation platform behind $500M+ in annual revenue across different types of insurance/financial products. I managed both product and platform engineering teams. Assurance turned out to be a massive learning opportunity and I'm grateful for the time spent there.
Today, I'm co-founder and CTO of Moonset Health (previous known as Summed AI), where we're using large language models to solve a multitude of problems in technologically outdated industries like insurance and the medical field. We attended Y Combinator's first fall batch F24 and moved back to our home in Seattle after to continue building the business.
In my spare time, I enjoy being outdoors, playing music, and finding good food to eat.
In the winter, I try to spend nearly every weekend on the ski slopes and in the summer, you'll find me flying around on my paraglider.
I typically prefer lead climbing and am currently working on solidifying my ability to climb 5.12s; for boulders, I'm stuck somewhere around V7/8.
Music is a huge part of my life. If I'm not listening to something, I'm probably playing. Piano, flute, and guitar are my main instruments though I love to dabble and experiment with all kinds of sounds. I have perfect pitch so name any song and let's jam!
