Why I'm Writing
How I'm rediscovering the joy of building, writing, and exploring in the age of AI
My Origin Story
Before I became a product manager and someone who loves building software, I hated the idea of a career in technology. My dad is a software engineer by profession. I watched the man amass 30+ years of experience at pretty much all the classic tech companies you can think of: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Salesforce, Oracle, HP, Yahoo, and so on. My childhood, like so many others growing up in the Bay Area, was unknowingly immersed in the tech world.
But the thought of a career in technology repulsed me. In fact, I vowed never to do what my dad did for a living. This stems from a core memory I had as an 8 year old with my dad on “take your kids to work”. I happily sat in the backseat as we commuted up 101 in the carpool lane to Redwood City. My dad took me into his shared office at one of the Oracle HQ buildings. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting. But I proceeded to spend the entire day completely bored out of my mind. Lots of meetings and staring at the computer all day? Bleh. Count me out.
I’d rather be thinking about the world at large and what was outside of those screens. I loved reading, especially biographies and learning about people’s life journeys and accomplishments. I loved art, and understanding what inspired creativity and its different forms. I loved music, even though I desperately wished I was better at it, and how beautiful and soulful someone could make objects sound. I was a relentlessly curious kid that loved asking why. And I felt the best way to satisfy my curiosity was to look outward into the world. Not into screens.
My Journey
Coming out of high school, I was dead set on studying the humanities. I excelled at English and history classes, I loved writing and reading. I was good at math but not the best, and I struggled to really love studying science. I dreamt of becoming a lawyer or a politician or an economist. Anything but an engineer, like my dad. When it came time for college applications, I applied to liberal arts programs as a political science or economics major. But there was one new undergraduate program at the University of Pennsylvania that caught my eye: Networked & Social Systems Engineering. It was the only engineering school I applied to. Its core premise:
To understand and predict behavior, and to design new capabilities and services, we must understand people, systems, and incentives, and how the structure and properties of networks affects interactions.
I was intrigued. It was a multidisciplinary engineering program that gave students the technical skills, and the broader systems-level view on why certain technologies were successful. I wrote my application essay on a whim that same night. I wrote about networks, marketplaces, aligning human incentives, and what I hoped for the future of our world. I didn’t overthink it. I didn’t get peer feedback. I just wrote because I was inspired. I found out I got into the program a few months later, as 1 of 10 students.
My time in college was a constant struggle. Like so many others, I felt lost in knowing who I was or what I should be doing with myself. I struggled to get decent grades. I struggled to go to class consistently. I struggled to compete and keep up with the pre-professional vibes on campus. It felt like everyone had figured out something about themselves, life, and the world. Everyone except me.
The one glimmer of hope I had was following my own curiosity. As I got better at coding, I started participating in hackathons and hanging out with people who constantly built things. I was inspired. How could these kids take a random idea and manifest it? It was incredibly addicting. They weren’t doing it to get job interviews or internships. It was fun and empowering.
I spent my junior year winter break doing a personal hackathon over Christmas weekend. I sat down and decided to hack a data visualization tool for NFL quarterbacks. I’m an avid football fan and I was curious if you could find interesting patterns in the data. I built a simple tool that visualized NFL QBs as directed graphs where each edge went to a WR with a weight scored on pass attempts, completions, TDs, and yards. It took me a few days to build. Once I was done, I published it on www.reddit.com/r/nfl in case anyone else thought it’d be interesting and moved on.
Turns out, many people did. The Internet surprises you in the best and worst ways. My little side project struck a chord with people. It was the first time I stumbled onto building something for yourself, that also other people need or want. I didn’t make any money from this project nor did it turn into anything substantive on its own. But I learned the most valuable lesson about building:
You have the ability to manifest almost anything into existence. You need the willpower and discipline to see it through. But the potential to create exists in all of us.
My Career Since Then
In the decade since college, I’ve made a career out of being a generalist product manager. I’ve built product at amazing companies with great people. And as different PM archetypes: 0 to 1, growth, consumer, monetization, technical, late-stage and so on. I figured: put me in any company and on any team, and I’m just going to figure out how to be impactful by shipping product. I always chose opportunities where I’d grow because I was curious about the space. And I never focused on doubling down on a domain or specialization.
But somewhere along this journey, I got lost. I felt like I was stuck playing the wrong game. I focused on climbing the ladder and how to position myself optimally. I agonized over risks I couldn’t control or how other people perceived me. I worried about PM skills and forcing myself to cover gaps I had compared to other PMs. I saw where my career in product was headed, and I didn’t love it. And I could see myself losing the child-like joy of building.
These weren’t the reasons I got into building. I didn’t set out to climb a career ladder as a PM. Somewhere long ago, I started on my path because of a couple, simple truths:
I’ve always believed all of us have the potential to create
I believe technology expands that potential
Everything I’ve ever done professionally has been somewhere on that thread. Though if I’m being honest, I’ve lost sight of it at different points. And I struggled to remember who I was doing things for as I battled my own insecurities and imposter syndrome. It took work to look inside and ask hard questions for months, but it was worth the discomfort.
My recommitment is to follow my curiosity.
It turns out that following my curiosity this past year was good timing. It’s been an incredibly exciting one in the tech world. Like many others, I’ve also gone deep down the AI + LLM rabbit hole. It started with a simple side project I wanted to build for myself: a better GoodReads where you can use LLMs to ask questions, learn about key themes and messages, and enjoy reading again. On that thread, I discovered the real magic in using LLMs. It expands human curiosity, and makes us start believing it can’t be that hard to learn, build, or do things.
I’ve built, written, advised, learned, invested in, and overall immersed myself in learning about this space. I believe technology that can reason like the human mind will have profound impact on humanity’s arc. And it will also teach us more about how our own minds work. I believe so much of our world needs to be rebuilt or reimagined for what’s possible with this technology.
Given my perspective on AI and building in tech, here are some topics that I plan to write about regularly:
Finding magic in building software
Long-term memory and personalization with LLMs
Dynamic interfaces
The future of the web with agents
Creative tools leveraging AI
Tools for curiosity / human knowledge
The data wall & model pre/post-training
Product management, and how it evolves
My Promise
I observed something funny when exploring my curiosity with AI and LLMs. I was just having fun. The more I did, the more I gained energy. I’ve always been fascinated by understanding the human mind. So AI in a way became this unexpected intersection of technology and humanities for me. Whatever part of it — whether watching 3Blue1Brown videos to understand the math behind neural nets or — prototyping application interfaces— I’ve been hooked. And things that may feel like work to others, feel like play to me.
This energy is why I’m also recommitting to writing. I will write first and foremost, for myself. To keep fueling my passion for building software. And to create a space to explore my own reasoning and thinking. If I can write down my insights on this journey, I’ll have something to look back on and maybe even something that can help others. But most importantly, I’ve always loved writing. So I’m going to rekindle that love.
Thinking back on that day as an 8-year old sitting in my dad's office at Oracle, I never could have imagined where my career would go. The very thing I once found so uninteresting became the center of my professional life. Funny how life works out that way.
I followed in my dad's footsteps into the tech world, albeit on my own path. And I realize even on this chapter, I’m still driven by the same curiosity and wonder that captivated me as a kid. I'm filled with excitement and gratitude. I wouldn't be the builder I am today without my dad’s influence and example.
So here's to childhood dreams, winding paths, and the magic that happens when we block out the noise & follow our curiosity.