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. My whole life I've been solving multifaceted engineering problems and building orgs with limited resources. I know firsthand what kind of obsession it takes to take an implausible idea and make it reality, pulling from my experience building not only robots but whole competitive robotics programs, leading teams of engineers, and taking my own startups from concept to >10k users twice with swiftink.io and i.inc.
5. Who are your competitors, and what do you understand that they don't?
   1. Astroforge: A commercial project developing technology from level 1 and 2 all the way to 9 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?
   • P2P messaging system (slow tbh)
   • A ton of pre-transformer self-learning chatbots (didn't work)
   • Global top 1% game-playing robots (this was pretty fun)
   • Self-driving cars trained in simulation (unsafe)
   • FPV drones (fast)
   • ML document processing and problem extraction (pretty cool)
   • AI B2B SaaS Coursera competitor (fired)
   • AI transcription/translation platform (acquired)
   • Neuralink compression challenge (sota)
   • A ton of open-source stuff (free as in beer)
   • LLMs integrated into OS (sleek)
   • SF2 deep tech hackerhouse (active)
   • Designed & built liquid-fueled rocket engine (loud)
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