About
Updated October 26, 2026
2004–2018: Childhood
- 2004:Born & raised in New Glarus, a 2,000-person Swiss village in Wisconsin, by a business professor and a special education teacher
- 2010s:Developed many random (slightly-too-competitive) obsessions: all the sports, hula-hooping, Rubik’s cubes, math, pogo-sticking, video games, getting good grades (*cough* nerd)
- 2018:Selected for Wisconsin’s state-level high school music competition for my performance of Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude” as an 8th grader
- 2018:Introduced to the “How I Built This” podcast and became obsessed with entrepreneurship as a way to radically improve the world at age 15
2018–2022: High school
- 2019:Taught myself jazz piano and became my high school’s lead jazz pianist in 9th grade
- 2020:Spent most of my time in my room in deep introspection as an only child living in the middle of nowhere during COVID
- 2020:Performed Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in C sharp minor” virtually at state
- 2022:Valedictorian
- 2022:Selected for Wisconsin’s top high school jazz band.
- 2022:Nominated for an exemplary performer award for a performance of Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3
- 2022:Received a full-ride merit scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison
2022–2026: University
- 2022:Opened an Etsy shop with my mom selling sleep masks (posted 88 TikToks and had a few 1M+ view reddit posts before shutting it down due to ~150% tariffs)
- 2023:Interned at a biomedical device startup and Wisconsin’s largest VC fund of funds
- 2024:Ran a startup accelerator for student founders who raised $10Ms from investors like Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman
- 2024:Co-led the nation’s largest fully student-run pitch competition
- 2024:Committed to a philosophy major, discovered Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, and for the first time, felt like I’d found words to describe my world view
- 2025:Founded Breakout, a recruiting agency that placed 14 students & recent grads into early-stage startups within 8 months
- 2024-26:Hosted ~25 entrepreneurship meetups, 3 startup job fairs, and built a community of >500 student entrepreneurs
- 2026:Had a gnarly operation done: double jaw surgery (look up at your own risk)
- 2026:Closed Breakout to work on risks from powerful AI
- 2026:Selected as 1 of 16 notable graduates from my 8,500-person graduating class
2026 & beyond
- 2026:Joined BlueDot Impact as employee #9 and moved to San Francisco to get world-class entrepreneurs to protect humanity from catastrophic risks from powerful AI.
- 2026:Publish the first part of a letter series addressed to builders: Dear builders, humanity needs your help
- Someday:soonBuild the world’s most talent-dense community of exceptional, mission-obsessed entrepreneurs working on catastrophic risks from powerful AI
- Someday:less soonMarry my best friend (tbd). Have at least two kids (definitely not one if I can help it).
- Someday:even less soonInvest in a piano worth more than my car. Own a jazz club.
- Someday:not soonDie peacefully surrounded by my children and a smile on my face
Here’s the most updated version of what I’m up to now.
PS – Ultimately, I see my actions in life as a filter for finding the people I love. If you think there’s even a chance we would get along, you’d be doing me a favor by sending me a note :)