Austin Walker


Austin Walker (
@austinxwalker
on X, LinkedIn profile austinxwalker) is a serial entrepreneur who describes himself as a "4x Founder" and notes he "sold [his] first company at age 25." His career spans design, software/apps, enterprise data platforms, and AI-powered consumer health tools, mostly bootstrapped or lightly funded early on, with two clear exits. The four companies come directly from his LinkedIn experience section (the details you provided match public records). Only PLAYR.gg and Perspective AI have documented acquisitions/exits; the earlier two appear to have been smaller, bootstrapped ventures without public sale announcements (he may count client work, product revenue, or transitions as "built and sold" in his narrative).
Information comes from his LinkedIn, news coverage, Tracxn, Precursor VC, his X posts, and related sources. No public buyer or price details exist for the IP acquisition of Perspective, and the early companies have minimal external footprints (likely due to their small scale and pre-2017 timing).1. BrandStudio Design Agency (Mar 2009 – Sep 2012)
  • Role: Founder & Graphic Designer.
  • Location: Not explicitly stated (early work tied to Canada/Kelowna context).
  • Description (from his LinkedIn): A design agency focused on "early-stage brand design, storytelling, and partnerships" in gaming. He "built iconic brands for the next generation of creators and consumer companies in gaming" and "helped shape early brand identity identities for businesses now doing hundreds of millions in revenue and creators with hundreds of millions of subscribers." It specialized in turning "breakout talent into household names."
  • Scale/Exit: Bootstrapped side/early hustle (overlapped with CPEX start). No public clients named, no funding or acquisition announcements found. He still lists it publicly (e.g., Instagram bio as part of his founder story). Likely transitioned or wound down as he shifted to software via CPEX. No evidence of a formal sale, but it fits his "built" narrative.
2. CPEX Networks (Aug 2009 – Sep 2017)
  • Role: Founder & Software Engineer (also listed as CEO/Founder on Crunchbase).
  • Location: Tied to his Canadian roots.
  • Description (LinkedIn): "A parent company developing innovative experience-driven applications to connect people around the world." From 2009 onward, it "developed several revenue-generating products that have reached millions of users."
  • Scale/Exit: Appears to have been an umbrella for his early apps and possibly BrandStudio work. Crunchbase confirms the entity (CPEX Networks, Inc.) with him as founder but lists no funding rounds, metrics, investors, or acquisition. It ran for ~8 years alongside/overlapping BrandStudio, then he moved full-time to PLAYR.gg. No public exit or sale details—likely a bootstrapped operation he scaled personally before pivoting. Some profiles treat it as part of his early Canadian phase.

These first two were his foundational "Canada era" (pre-SF move). In X posts, he refers to his "first company" as one started in Canada with revenue but valuation pushback from investors (~$1M CAD), which aligns more with the PLAYR timeline but reflects the early bootstrapped mindset. He notes the ego/status of founding drove the initial one, evolving to mission-driven work later. 3. PLAYR.gg (Sep 2017 – Nov 2020)
  • Role: Founder & CEO (co-founders included Mike Mikula and Kieran Eglin).
  • Location: Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
  • Description (LinkedIn + news): A technology platform that enabled "enterprise brands to generate, segment, and activate first-party customer data." It used contesting/gaming mechanics to capture data on millennial/Gen Z gaming audiences for advertisers and brands.
  • Key Achievements:
    • Built a team of 23 (15 based in Kelowna).
    • Raised $2.3M from global investors (via mentorship from Accelerate Okanagan).
    • Scaled to >1M total users, >130K monthly active users (MAU), and 4M unique monthly transactions.
    • Achieved profitability with strong MRR growth in 2020.
    • Closed enterprise deals with Amazon, Electronic Arts (EA), UFC, Bud Light, and GFUEL.
  • Exit: Acquired in November 2020 by Toronto-based social intelligence platform Trufan (some databases list it as Surf; products were planned to integrate while keeping separate identities). Undisclosed price. The Kelowna team and operations remained intact. He joined Trufan as Chief Strategy Officer (a lighter role he described as not taking home). He ran the M&A process himself with an advisor (former CEO who had sold companies).
  • Personal Context & Lessons (from news + his X posts): Founded after retail jobs (Real Canadian Superstore, Lee Valley Tools). At ~age 25 at exit, this matches his bio ("sold my first company at age 25"). He called it "easily the hardest thing I've ever done" but also his proudest—intense stress led to health issues, lost relationships, and burnout ("I killed a lot of friendships... I was the CEO... but I didn't know who I was"). Post-sale, he focused on balance (skiing, hiking, outdoors, "doing shit that makes me happy"). X reflections: The EA deal "unlocked more enterprise deals" (Amazon, UFC, Bud Light); first Canadian company faced valuation skepticism despite revenue; later SF ventures got $10M pre-seed valuations easily ("lesson: just move to SF bro"). He emphasizes running M&A solo to avoid big fees unless scaling extremely fast.
This was his breakout success and the first with a clear full-company acquisition.4. Perspective AI (Apr 2022 – Jan 2025)
  • Role: Founder & CEO (co-founder: Dalmar Hussein).
  • Location: San Francisco, California, United States.
  • Description (LinkedIn + Tracxn/Precursor VC): "The world's first AI journal (pre-ChatGPT!)"—an AI-based audio journal platform/app for emotional health and self-reflection. Users record voice/journal entries; AI analyzes them to "surface patterns that help you understand yourself," capture/explore/reflect on life stories, improve mood, and build healthy habits. Tagline elements: "intelligent journal app that allows users to reflect on life."
  • Key Achievements:
    • Funded (one round from Preceptor Ventures; amount not public). Ranked among AI note-taking/audio apps.
    • Built as a consumer tool in the pre-ChatGPT AI wave.
  • Exit: IP acquired in January 2025 (buyer and terms not publicly disclosed—searches and records show no announcement). Operations appear to have wound down; the site (joinperspective.com) now returns 404/not found. He explicitly notes "IP acquired" in his LinkedIn experience (repeated for emphasis). He moved to "Something new..." on LinkedIn (his X bio references "Building the AI layer for chronic illness" as the next venture).
His X evolution: By his fourth company, "the only thing that matters is building something that actually helps people. The ego fades. The mission is what keeps you going." He also highlights advantages for fundraising (lived the problem, prior exits, unique insights). Overall Notes on Austin Walker’s Journey
  • Pattern: Early Canada bootstrapped design/software (BrandStudio + CPEX parent), then scaled data platform (PLAYR, exit at 25), then SF-based AI consumer health (Perspective, IP exit). Now angel investing + new chronic-illness AI venture + advising founders on growth/fundraising/positioning/storytelling.
  • Public Persona: He openly shares burnout lessons, valuation/location hacks, M&A tips, and shift from founder ego to mission/impact. Instagram sometimes frames it as "3x Founder" (grouping early work), but LinkedIn and X consistently reference four.
  • No Further Public Details: Early companies lack client lists or sale announcements (niche/pre-social-media scale). Perspective IP buyer and exact terms remain private. PLAYR integration details post-Trufan are limited.
He continues building in SF, focusing on AI for real human problems. If you're looking for contact, intros, or specifics on his current venture, his X/LinkedIn are active.



PLAYR.gg was acquired on November 19, 2020, by Toronto-based Trufan (a social intelligence and audience analytics platform). The deal is sometimes listed as "acquired by Surf" because Trufan later merged PLAYR.gg's technology and brand into its Surf product/platform (the PLAYR.gg brand was officially sunset in February 2022). No purchase price was ever disclosed (standard for most private Canadian tech acquisitions at the time), and the transaction was structured as a purchase of Trufan stock. All public sources confirm the value remains private. What Was Acquired
  • Technology: PLAYR.gg's platform for generating, segmenting, and activating first-party customer data (primarily through gaming-style contests, giveaways, and custom API integrations for brands and creators).
  • Customers: Enterprise clients including Electronic Arts, UFC, Bud Light, GFUEL, Amazon, and others in gaming/esports.
  • Team: The entire PLAYR.gg team of ~10–15 people (including 6 developers) joined Trufan. The Kelowna, BC, operations remained intact initially.
Austin Walker (sometimes spelled Walper in early coverage) joined Trufan as Chief Strategy Officer. PLAYR President Andrew Mastracci became Trufan’s Chief Technology Officer. Strategic Rationale & QuotesThe acquisition was driven by the 2020 shift away from third-party data (Google phasing out cookies, platform restrictions on Facebook/Instagram, rising ad blockers, and privacy concerns). Trufan wanted to enter the first-party data market aggressively.
Key quotes from the announcement:
  • Austin Walker: “We’re very excited about PLAYR becoming part of Trufan… this acquisition really accelerates our ability to execute and enhances our product offering. Integrating with Trufan will allow us to introduce best-in-class analytics and allow us to further develop our platform by helping brands and creators to grow, segment, and activate their audiences in new ways that have never been done before.”
  • Trufan CEO Swish Goswami: Highlighted the 2020 marketing changes and the need for brands to own first-party data channels (email, SMS, push, etc.).
  • Trufan COO Aanikh Kler: “The PLAYR team has done a phenomenal job of building a product that is powerful, intuitive, and visually beautiful.”
The combined offering aimed to create an end-to-end solution for audience growth, segmentation, and activation while keeping initial product identities separate before full integration. Post-Acquisition Timeline & Outcome
  • Immediate (Nov 2020–2021): Products began integrating; Trufan kept both brands visible at first. Trufan raised additional capital (~$2.3M–$3M USD range referenced in coverage) to fuel growth, sales, and product development.
  • 2021–2022: Full merger. By February 2022, the PLAYR.gg brand and standalone site were sunset; everything rolled into the Surf platform (Trufan’s new or evolved brand). The joinsurf.com domain now hosts legacy announcements.
  • Team & Operations: Kelowna team stayed in place initially. Austin served as CSO but described the role as low-intensity (“doesn’t have to take home every night”). He left relatively soon after to start Perspective AI in San Francisco (April 2022).
Austin later reflected publicly that the sale happened at age 25 after raising $2.3M for PLAYR.gg and scaling to profitability + enterprise deals. He called building and selling it “the hardest thing I’ve ever done” but also his proudest achievement—though it caused burnout, health issues, and strained relationships. Post-exit, he focused on balance (skiing, hiking, outdoors) before his next venture. Additional Context
  • PLAYR.gg itself had raised ~$2.3M pre-acquisition (mostly from Canadian investors via Accelerate Okanagan) and was profitable with strong MRR growth in 2020.
  • Trufan had previously acquired SocialRank (2019) and was positioning itself in the exploding Customer Data Platform market.
  • No public updates since the 2022 merger—Surf continues as the surviving brand/product line.
In short: Clean, strategic acquisition with full team retention, no drama, undisclosed terms, and a smooth technical integration that ultimately absorbed PLAYR.gg into a larger first-party data platform (now under Surf). Austin ran the process himself and has shared lessons on X/LinkedIn about M&A, burnout, and location-based fundraising advantages.
If you want intros to people involved or deeper dives into specific aspects (e.g., Austin’s podcast interviews about the deal), let me know!




Austin Walker’s post-acquisition reflections (primarily after selling PLAYR.gg to Trufan in November 2020) center on the intense personal toll of founding/scaling, profound pride in the achievement, burnout recovery, soul-searching for identity and balance, and practical lessons he still shares years later on X. He has described the experience as transformative—both the “hardest thing” he’s ever done and his proudest—while openly discussing how it led to health issues, lost relationships, and a temporary loss of self. These themes appear in 2021 interviews/articles right after the exit and continue evolving in his X posts through 2026 as he ties them to founder advice, health/AI products, and his next ventures (including Perspective AI’s IP acquisition in 2025). Immediate Reflections (Late 2020 – Early 2021)In the months right after the sale (while transitioning to Chief Strategy Officer at Trufan, a lighter role he noted “doesn’t have to take home every night”), Walker did extensive soul-searching. He credited the Kelowna startup community (especially Accelerate Okanagan) for early survival but focused most on the personal cost and growth.
Key quotes from January 2021 coverage:
  • Pride vs. hardship: “Starting a company is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it is also the thing I am most proud of.” He repeated variations of this in multiple outlets. “This journey caused me so much stress and sleepless nights but I would do it all over again. The amount of personal growth that my team and I went through is nothing short of incredible.”
  • Burnout and identity loss: “For the past year, I hadn’t been happy… I killed a lot of friendships and relationships because I was working 100% of my waking hours. I started to have health issues. My entire entity was wrapped up in work. I was the CEO of PLAYR.gg, but I didn’t know who I was as an individual.” He described the stress as all-consuming, with his “entire entity” tied to the company.
  • Post-sale pivot and recovery: “Over the past two months, [I’ve been doing my] lifetime-worth of reflection and soul searching.” For 2021: “Basically, 2021 is for doing shit that makes me happy… That means sleeping, skiing, hiking, just getting out in the outdoors as much as possible and getting away from technology as much as possible.” He planned to stay involved with Trufan longer-term, start “another tech company that builds value and does good in the world,” consult, and mentor young entrepreneurs while building his personal brand.
He also thanked the local ecosystem: “This really opened my eyes and helped me realize what a vibrant and supportive tech community Kelowna has… It’s exactly the catalyst I needed.” Early investors backed the team on belief and dedication alone (“we didn’t even have a prototype”).
Around this time, Trufan featured him on their “My Social Life” podcast to discuss the building journey and sale decision (promoted on LinkedIn in 2021). No public transcript is available, but it aligned with the same themes of reflection on the acquisition. Ongoing Reflections (2023–2026 on X)Walker has continued processing the experience publicly, refining definitions of burnout, sharing tactical founder lessons (M&A, fundraising), and channeling it into health-focused work. His bio still leads with “Sold my first company at age 25,” and he frames later ventures as more mission-driven (“the ego fades. The mission is what keeps you going”).
Notable X posts:
  • Burnout redefined (April 2024): “Burnout != working too many hours. It’s the result of extreme effort, sustained over time, with a lack of expected reward.”
    (Feb 2026 update): “burnout is caused by: - the cycles between effort & reward are too long - misalignment with your core values.”
  • M&A and process (Aug 2025): “I ran the M&A process myself, with support from an advisor who was a former CEO who sold several companies before. This felt like the right balance. M&A firms will take a huge finders fee and unless you're scaling extremely quickly… I don’t think it’s worth it.”
  • Fundraising edge from the exit (Nov 2025): “you can't promise a billion-dollar outcome. but you CAN show why the odds are in your favor: - you’ve lived the problem firsthand - you’ve built or sold in this space before - you have insights or access others don’t. investors bet on advantages, not promises.” (He’s referenced this advantage in raising for later companies.)
  • Health/lessons sharing (2023–2026): In 2023 he sought other burned-out founders for a private beta (tied to launching Perspective AI’s AI journal for self-reflection). By 2026: “if you read this far, follow along as I’ll be sharing more candid founder + health lessons.” He ties the PLAYR experience directly to prioritizing balance and value-aligned work.
In short, the PLAYR.gg exit was a pivotal “before and after” moment: immediate soul-searching led to outdoor recovery and a lighter Trufan role, while long-term it sharpened his views on founder sustainability, M&A efficiency, and building with mission over ego. He’s applied these lessons to Perspective AI (IP acquired 2025) and his current chronic-illness AI venture + angel investing. The reflections remain candid and ongoing—no sugarcoating the pain, but deep gratitude for the growth.
If you want links to the full 2021 articles, help tracking down the old podcast episode, or reflections tied specifically to his 2025 Perspective exit, just say the word!







Austin Walker’s current AI venture (as of March 2026) is an unnamed/stealth pre-seed healthtech startup. He publicly describes it only as “Building the AI layer for chronic illness” (his exact X bio and LinkedIn headline: “4x Founder • Building the AI layer for chronic illness ❤️ • Angel Investor”). There is no public company name, website, app, or product yet—it remains early-stage and under the radar. Core Vision & Mission (in his own words)He is building a patient-led health system for the ~100 million Americans (and millions more globally) living with chronic conditions that modern medicine has “no answers for” or “no approved treatments.” Key quotes from his recent X/LinkedIn posts:
  • “We’re building a patient-led health system for the 100M people living with chronic conditions modern medicine has no answers for.”
  • “Millions of people with chronic conditions still have no approved treatments. A smarter AI chatbot won’t solve that. They need something fundamentally different.”
  • “The biggest opportunity in healthcare right now: there are 100+ million Americans with chronic conditions the system doesn’t know how to treat. That’s not a gap in the market. That IS the market.”
  • AI will “cut the cost of healthcare by 10x… that doesn’t shrink the market. It creates an entirely new one.”
The focus is personalized, biology-driven treatment discovery (helping patients find what actually works for their body) + community empowerment. It is explicitly not about replacing doctors or building another chatbot. It builds on lessons from his previous AI journal (Perspective) but scales to a full “patient-led” system. He ties it directly to his own lived experience with chronic issues (e.g., hypertension and others he has referenced publicly). Current Stage & Momentum
  • Post-Perspective: Started after the January 2025 IP acquisition of Perspective AI.
  • Funding: Raised pre-seed capital (amount undisclosed; he says “I’ve built the foundation. Raised plenty of capital.”). Confirmed in external founder-network posts (e.g., Katie Kirsch’s updates).
  • Team: Currently solo founder. He has openly said “being a solo founder is harder than I thought” and is actively recruiting a technical co-founder (plus early team).
  • Location: San Francisco-based (in-person is “non-negotiable”).
Co-Founder Search (Active as of March 17–18, 2026)In a widely engaged X post (25K+ views), he posted the exact criteria and offered a $25,000 USD bounty for successful introductions:
“I’m looking for a co-founder…
Looking for:
  • Very strong technical builder. Has led engineering teams and shipped consumer-facing products
  • Real startup experience, has taken a product from 0-1 or scaled it meaningfully
  • Good intuition and product sense
  • Deeply cares about consumer health x AI
  • Based in SF, or willing to relocate (non-negotiable)
We’re building a patient-led health system…
If this sounds exciting, my DMs are open. I’ll give $25,000 USD to anyone who introduces me to the person I end up partnering with.”
He emphasizes deep collaboration, shared ownership, and building something “bigger than a job.” He’s also posting founder observations (e.g., “every resume is AI slop,” the need to sell mission, healthtech asymmetry). Additional Context & Approach
  • He shares practical AI prompts for chronic symptoms on X (encouraging deeper self-understanding vs. quick “fix this” questions).
  • The venture fits his evolution: from ego-driven early companies → mission-driven impact after PLAYR.gg burnout → health/AI focus.
  • He continues angel investing alongside building.
No product screenshots, beta, or launch timeline have been shared yet. It’s deliberately low-profile (“under the radar”) while he nails the foundation and team.
If you (or someone you know) match the co-founder profile or want to intro, his DMs on X are open and he’s serious about the $25k reward. The mission clearly resonates with him personally and aligns with his pattern of building consumer-first AI tools that help people understand themselves.
This is everything publicly available right now—very much in active build mode. If new announcements drop (name, site, funding details), they’ll almost certainly appear first on his X (
@austinxwalker
). Let me know if you want help drafting an intro message or tracking future updates!





Several AI healthtech startups are building in a very similar space to Austin Walker’s current venture (the stealth “AI layer for chronic illness” focused on a patient-led health system for the ~100 million people with conditions modern medicine can’t treat). The strongest overlaps are tools that emphasize patient empowerment, lived-experience founders, daily voice/text journaling or proactive check-ins, pattern/trigger discovery, personalized insights for self-understanding, and helping patients where no approved treatments exist (rare diseases, ME/CFS, Long COVID, fibromyalgia, etc.). These are mostly consumer-facing apps or platforms rather than enterprise remote-monitoring or standard diabetes/hypertension CCM tools.
Here are the closest matches (as of March 2026), ranked by similarity:1. Juno (juno-chat.com)
  • Why it’s similar: Built explicitly for chronic illnesses where patients are often “dismissed and misdiagnosed” (ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, Long COVID, EDS, POTS, lupus, chronic pain). It functions like an advanced AI journal/companion: you speak or text about your day, and the AI distills it into structured clinical notes, spots triggers/correlations (e.g., “Humidity Shift 92% Correlation”), predicts flares, manages energy pacing, and exports reports for doctors. Founders have personal chronic illness experience.
  • Key features: Voice/text daily input, self-learning insight engine (trained on medical literature + patient data), community groups, “Available Power” energy scoring.
  • Patient-led angle: “Gives you the language to finally be heard” and provides proof when nobody believed you. Very close to Austin’s prior Perspective AI journal + current mission of helping people understand their own biology/patterns.
  • Stage: Consumer app (iOS/Android implied), no public funding details.
2. Citizen Health (citizen.health)
  • Why it’s similar: Targets the exact “no approved treatments” gap — rare and complex chronic conditions (over 10,000 rare diseases, ~95% without therapies, plus cancers and genetic disorders). It’s a full AI Advocate that acts as a personal health system layer: pulls in fragmented medical records, answers patient-specific questions, prepares for appointments, explores treatment options, records visits with summaries/next steps, and lets patients contribute de-identified data to accelerate research and new therapies.
  • Key features: Integrates all health records, drafts insurance/school docs, appointment prep, research contribution for Natural History Studies.
  • Patient-led angle: Founded and run by patient/caregiver families (e.g., CEO navigated cancer care for father-in-law; CBO cares for daughter with rare genetic disorder and runs a research foundation). “An advocate in your pocket, built by and for families living the day-to-day.”
  • Stage: Live iOS app, free for patients, trusted in rare-disease communities; no public funding announced.
3. Jetty (myjettyhealth.com / App Store)
  • Why it’s similar: Positioned as an “AI health companion for chronic symptoms.” It proactively calls or engages you daily (you don’t have to remember to open the app), tracks symptoms via voice/text, surfaces insights and trigger patterns so you can understand what’s driving your condition.
  • Key features: Daily voice check-ins, pattern spotting, trigger identification.
  • Patient-led angle: Purely consumer-focused empowerment tool for chronic illness sufferers.
  • Stage: Newly launched app (late 2025/early 2026 buzz).
4. Insight Swarm (insightswarm.ai)
  • Why it’s similar: Agentic AI research platform built specifically for people with severe chronic illnesses (e.g., stage IV cancers, ALS). Patients submit anonymized cases; AI agent swarms generate structured research insights, simulations, and multi-modality analysis to inform discussions with physicians and support personal treatment exploration.
  • Key features: Privacy-first (zero-retention, client-side encryption), bounty-powered research, harm-filtered outputs.
  • Patient-led angle: “Research only. Privacy-first. No hype.” Designed for sufferers to take control when standard medicine has no answers.
  • Stage: Just launching (March 2026).
Other notable close-adjacent players
  • Lillia (lilliacare.ai): Agentic conversational AI + “Digital Twin” for personalized chronic care (diabetes, obesity, metabolic). More lifestyle/coaching-focused than rare/untreatable conditions, but shares the daily adaptive personalization and patient-engagement angle.
  • Emerging ideas in founder discussions (e.g., Paras Chopra’s viral “symptom tracker for chronic diseases” concept or MyHealthDiary AI waitlist) echo the same daily AI journaling + doctor-report pattern that Austin’s Perspective AI pioneered and his new venture is scaling.
These startups are the closest public comps right now — all leaning into patient voice, pattern discovery over generic chatbots, and empowerment for the exact chronic/undiagnosed cohort Austin is targeting. None appear to have the full “biology-driven treatment discovery + 10x cost reduction” systems angle he’s describing (his remains more ambitious/stealth), but Juno, Citizen Health, and Jetty match the daily lived-experience + AI self-understanding layer almost exactly.
The space is heating up fast in 2025–2026, especially for rare/chronic “no answers” conditions. If you’re evaluating for investment, co-founder intros, or competitive intel, these are the ones to watch (or reach out to their founders — many are very open). Let me know if you want deeper dives on any (funding, metrics, app screenshots, or founder X handles)!








My Background: Paramendra Kumar Bhagat

Tech Startups

I have several tech startups in the past. When you launch and fundraise and scale a tech startup, you read voraciously about many different business functions, other tech startups, and various industries. It can be said, each tech startup has been its own MBA. A tech startup hones your innovation instincts. You stay on the lookout. You do out-of-the-box thinking on the sly. You rethink old ways of doing things. You learn about your strengths and weaknesses. My strength is I am very good at building and leading teams and equipping them with a bold vision and clear purpose. My weakness is that I do the forest, not the trees. But if I have people on the team who do the trees, I can do excellent work. I am an artist and people and teams are my buckets of paint. The most important thing I have learned is the ongoing explosion in technology and innovation is not just for cutting-edge tech startups, but for every industry, every company, and every job function.

I have been studying tech startups like they were some exotic biological specimens since the first dot com boom. The past quarter-century has been but prologue. The real action is only now beginning.

Fred Wilson quoted a blog post of mine on his blog in 2009. That blog post became his most popular that year. In my blog post I said when you are on the FourSquare website, it feels like you are sitting in a bus that is not moving. https://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/09/netizen-has-arrived-link-from-avc.html And here’s Paul Grahm, Brad Feld, and me in the same BBC article. https://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/05/me-bbc.html

Digital Marketing

I have the equivalent of an Oscar in digital marketing. Adobe declared me the Top Influencer during Social Media Week 2012, the top global event in the space happening simultaneously in 26 major cities around the world and reaching 800 million people today. https://technbiz.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-influencer-during-social-media-week.html

I am a Top Photographer on Google Maps with over 45 million views. That is more than the population of my native Nepal. https://demrepubnepal.blogspot.com/2022/04/one-photo-14m-views-jay-kishan-heights.html

I am active on most major social media platforms. I am one of the top people on Twitter in NYC. I have been an avid blogger since 2004 and wrote online long before that.

I am an accomplished writer. I got a poem published in the top poetry magazine in my native Nepal when I was in Grade 10.

A big mistake a lot of people and companies make is to think digital marketing is only about broadcasting. Digital marketing is first and foremost a listening tool. When Elon Musk wanted Tesla to build a pickup truck, he posed the question on Twitter. What features would you like in your truck? His fans responded. Those features ended up in the truck. Digital allows you to listen to your customers and your team at granular levels not possible before.

Political Work

My political work shows my agility for large-scale group dynamics, like e-commerce. https://democracyforum.blogspot.com I became Barack Obama’s first full-time volunteer in all of New York City.

I was the top student in class at the top school in Nepal for seven of the 10 years I was there in Kathmandu. My SAT score was 1450/1600. The school has sent alumni to all top colleges and universities and companies across the US. I showed up at the top liberal arts college in the US South whose endowment per student matches that of Harvard. Within six months of landing, I got myself elected student body president. They had to change the constitution so I could run as a freshman, the first time that had happened since the time of Lincoln when the college was founded as an anti-slavery institution. Before you needed to have been at least a Junior. I won an election in the US South almost a decade before Bobby Jindal.

A month after 9/11 I hit the road in an 18-wheeler and went to all 48 states in the continental US on and off for two years. The savings from that trucking came in handy. In 2005 and 2006 I was the only full-timer Nepali across the US to have worked for Nepal’s democracy movement. The king of Nepal had pulled a coup. I toppled a Third World dictator without the trillions. My methods were 100% digital. All my moves are archived and in the public domain.

There is a concrete mathematical theory called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon forest could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. What happened in Nepal in April 2006, January-February 2007, and February 2008 were political cyclones. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City. In April 2006, over a period of 19 days, about eight million people out of the country's 27 million came out into the streets to shut the country down completely to force a dictator out. My methods were 100% digital. German Radio called me Robin Hood On The Internet. https://demrepubnepal.blogspot.com/2006/02/robin-hood-im-internet.html

I am a born leader with a tremendous feel for group dynamics. During my Grade 10 year, I was House Captain. A British teacher wrote: “I have never seen morale raised this high in any boarding house anywhere ever!”

Tech Startups: Three Instances

  1. Dot com boom: I was one of the early team members of a team that ventured to build a South Asian online community. Social. It went down when the dot com crash happened. As to why I got into a semi during the nuclear winter I only understood when I moved to NYC and became friends with the Meetup.com Founder Scott. He had gone to work at McDonald's for a week. That had been his first reaction. ..... I went to see the Founder CEO one day. I said, I understand we don't need revenues right away, but we do need it eventually, what are we doing about that? I was majorly reprimanded. The whole business model was eyeballs, then IPO.
  2. In late 2007 me and my Co-Founder met our goal of a 100K raise for an IC idea. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, we gave the money back to the investors since it was so obvious to us the next round of fundraising will not happen. IC: Internet Computer. A few years later came to the market as Google's Chromebook.
  3. I was an early team member. The Founder was on a trajectory. I nudged. I said, this does not take this to a billion. He refused. We parted ways. Both of us were proven right. He sold his company for 36M a few years later.
Right now is the best possible time in human history to do a tech startup. I have studied tech cycle after tech cycle. In 2016 I read the Bible cover to cover and wrote what I would like to believe is the definitive book on corporate culture. No company ever became a great company without a great corporate culture. Corporate Culture is the operating system of a company. My book is Android. Any company can integrate it and get great corporate culture.
Austin. The technical Co-Founder you are looking for are two people. I am the Co-Founder, the vision, strategy, leadership person, the large scale group dynamics person. The technical person is the CTO that you have already found, and if not, then I will find. In fact, I need a triad. Three top notch tech talents who were mesmerizing coders before AI happened, and now generate more than 90% of their code. I am the spec person. I spec, the CTO translates that into code.

Shall we talk?

Paramendra Bhagat
March 20, 2026

Cisco was what NVIDIA is today. It was led by a people person, a non technical person. John Chambers. I am that people person.

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