ZFellows

  1. Are you in school or working? Or both? Where at?
    1. Working full time on Khan Space Industries
  2. What is the project you are currently working on or want to pursue?
    1. My mission is to seed life in the universe via von Neumann probes. Life is the only force in the universe that combats entropy. First product is designed as a financial flywheel. We're developing a fundamentally scaleable architecture for asteroid mining, plan being significant revenue within 4 years. In the moderate case, it outcompetes terrestrial mining operations and doubles the supply of the most valuable minerals (platinum group metals market size of 30B annually) in just the first decade.
  3. What problem are you solving?
    1. Life having a single point of failure. If Earth fails, it's entirely possible nobody has another birthday ever again in the entire universe.
  4. What expertise do you have to execute your work?
    1. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. I grew up on the internet, learning programming by selling scripts online when I was 13, moving on to 3D designs, and then used all the money I saved to start my first manufacturing business. I saw the fidget spinner trend beginning, so I ordered 1k skateboard bearings and a catalog of parts from China to build a RepRap clone, starting a fab in my bedroom. For weeks, every two hours an alarm would go off, I'd wake up if I was already asleep, clear the print bed and start the next batch. Then in the morning before school spray painting and assembling the batch for the day, run to the bus stops of nearby schools, distribute to my resellers (other kids), sell at school all day, and going home, collect my profits, give commissions, and continue manufacturing. I ended up getting shut down by the county which indeed aided in my radicalization against institutions. When I was 15, I built a business hosting servers for source engine games. At the same time, I started the first private competitive robotics org in my hometown, which is now a top 1% performer nationally. I became the first engineering hire at the ai startup Onder at 17 and built the MVP solo over in under 12 weeks. At 18 I joined jeeny.ai and built a team of 20 engineers, trained them, and brought their product to market in 4 months. I then left and started my own company, and went from concept to products with >10k users twice with swiftink.io and i.inc. This last summer I started sf2, a deep-tech hackerhouse which attracted incredible talent, spinning out companies working on BCIs, intelligent chip design, drone ai, humanoid robots, and rare earth metal refinement. Over the fall I learned rocket propulsion physics to design, build, and test a 500N rocket engine, all accomplished in under 60 days.
  5. Who are your competitors, and what do you understand that they don't?
    1. Astroforge: Having to develop their chosen technology from TRL (NASA standard) 1 all the way to 9 lowers probability of success of the company significantly. They're betting on developing a novel microgravity mining and refining system. A redirect approach is significantly simpler, and NASA ARM has already brought the requisite technologies into high TRLs.
    2. DSI & Planetary Resources (defunct): Budget for failure. Space is not tolerant, and what would be a minor failure on earth often terminates space missions. There will be oversights and allowing for single mission failures to bankrupt your company is not a winning strategy. I've spoken with Daniel Faber (CEO DSI), Joel Sercel (CEO Trans Astronautica Corporation), Grant Bonin (CTO DSI) and Martin Elvis (pioneering astrophysicist) and they all mirror this sentiment.
  6. What have you worked on in the past?
  7. What's the nerdiest thing about you?
    1. My default thought has always been "how does it work?". Some of my earliest memories are of me being obsessed with car engines and vacuums because their mechanisms were mysteries to me and I couldn't live with that. When I was 10 my parents showed me Jurassic Park for the first time, and of course loved dinosaurs. I looked into how they rendered them so realistically and ended up spending much of my free time for the next few years learning 3D graphics, modeling, and animation, which in turn led me to building a business selling custom animated videos online.
  8. What drives you?
    1. Life is the only force in the universe that combats entropy. I have a very clear and specific vision for the future, one where order triumphs over entropy, and I don't believe anyone else will direct it to occur. Thus I must ensure that it comes to be.
  9. What non-traditional things were you doing growing up?
    1. In middle school I was captivated by the idea of additive manufacturing and 3d printers, these were the early days. The fidget spinner craze started, which sparked an idea. I ordered parts from China, built a RepRap 3D printer clone, acquired 1k skateboard bearings, and started a fab in my bedroom. At night every two hours I'd wake up, clear the print bed and start the next one, in the morning before school spray painting and assembling the batch for the day, run to the bus stops of other schools, distribute to my resellers (other kids) there, sell at school all day, and going home, collect my profits, give commissions, and continue manufacturing. My business was forcibly closed by the government (school) after a few weeks, which indeed aided in my radicalization against institutions.
  10. Describe a risk or challenge you've faced.
    1. I always planned to jump straight into the world rather than go to a university. To this end, I graduated hs early and began working in startups immediately to the chagrin of my family and friends. I moved out of the country alone to pursue it. I had no plan B if this did not work. Along the way, I've had instances where I measured runway in weeks instead of years (for example, right now), worked past mental breaks (they don't exist) and have gone against the advice of literally everyone I know.
  11. Personal and/or Project Website and/or Links about you
    1. https://skg.gg
  12. List or describe any achievements and prizes.
    1. Virginia innovation challenge winner 2015.
    2. Competitive robotics regional champion 5x and virginia champion 2x 2015-2020.
    3. Graduated hs early, only one in my class, thus valedictorian
    4. Built and led technical teams at 3 startups before starting my own
  13. Who would you co-found a company with if you could pick anyone in your network
    1. Alex Koch