Hey stranger, welcome to this info dump (subtle flex) about myself. I’m not taking you on a journey or anything, just dumping my thoughts here. My LinkedIn is my resume, so if you ever want to poach me, just use that. Insta is a photo dump, X is a professional thought dump.
Who Am I? Founder of a satellite communications company, once (still) backed by Y Combinator during its first-ever fall batch. That happened when I first moved to the Bay Area in late June 2024. Apart from being a founder, I’m a bit of a radio nerd and love doing weird experiments with GNU Radio blocks and that one PlutoSDR in my garage. Currently trying to learn FreeFlyer so I can avoid hiring a full-time Orbital Dynamics person.
Who Was I, in India? Born in Jammu (a small town in Kashmir), coded at age 7, awarded world records, wrote a book, got awarded by the President of India, built a satellite (was supposed to be launched on an Indian rocket, PSLV or maybe SSLV?), and then apparently ended up teaching spacecraft subsystems at the Indian Institute of Technology in Jammu. I also dabbled in computational biology for a while as I wrote my paper.
Moving to America, Why? High school. Thanks to Eric Schmidt (I’m a Rise Fellow), I was sponsored for a full ride to do my senior year at Avenues The World School (now AEON, because some big school chain bought the NYC campus) and walked at graduation at Pier Sixty in Manhattan. I enrolled for a semester at a small state school in Pennsylvania (they don’t deserve to be named), then dropped out (hated the crazy-ass roommate situation) and moved to the Bay Area. It’s the only place in the States that felt like home, thanks to those true homies!
What Now? Building space lasers, 16U satellite platforms, radio subsystems to be integrated with LCTs, and antennas for uplink/downlink. Basically doing a lot for my dearest company! Along with Geffen (my dearest co-founder and CTO), we’re planning to build our first free-space lasers as a weekend or summer thing. It’s pretty similar to this optical Ethernet project.
On a side note: Because of a series of overthinking sessions during Christmas last year, I had some crazy lucid dreams about experimenting with chemistry, especially using PEM fuel cells to generate external reactive energy sources to power in-orbit subsystems. It’s probably just a leftover unnoticed thought, but I’d love for someone to do a power + cost feasibility analysis and send it to me by email.
Some unpopular opinions:
I usually work out in Haight/SoMa. If you ever catch me, please say hi. I’m an easily recognizable brown face with a big beard for a 19-year-old, usually rocking a black durag/turban/bandana. Seriously, say hello on X and let’s catch up.