Building Tomorrow

To be honest, this was pulled off in under a month. From a warm intro to Tahseen and HOF thanks to Baylor at ZFelllows, it was non-stop fun. While there were many late night calling and meetings, it was only possible by the graceful words that came out when negotiating the terms,

| "We'll help with intros and the venue, you do the rest". - Tahseen

Those very warm introductions reinforced why I love the builder community. What started as persuading Vercel head of startups to give NYU builders a shot, resulted in expanding reach to include V1 @ UMich and cracked builders from Penn, Columbia, Cornell and more. It's allowed me to grow in so many ways, and appreciate for all the people who I can trust, call, and hope to build on in the coming years.
Finally, I also learned one extra lesson. If someone drinks from Saratoga water daily, they know some people or made it, usually its both.

A chill sofa area where you'll find their collection of Saratoga Water

A week to grow student founders @ NYU

Startup Week 2024 was my entry into the mystical worlds of startups. 2025 was the year I got to co-lead it. I had a vision, to bring it to new heights, to bring together a hungry team wanting to prove we could do it, and most of all to bring together the community. From our new events to our classic banquet, we delivered the best its been in years past. It has been a bitter sweet moment knowing that I may not lead it again, but I am comforted that Michael, Parul and I have trained Grace and Nicole to lead it.

Even amidst the long nights, stressful moments, forcing myself on the A train to manage the venues, I had alot of fun with my team. From the team Thai massaging ribeye steaks as we barbequed in the frigid winter, pool competitions and the occassional nice meal was a great way to bond. It's hard to now detach Startup Week from essentially what defined my freshman + sophomore college life and fun. Hopefully I may get one more run of this rollercoaster ride, but we shall see if God permits.

Missing the vibe master, Dorien Zhang

36 Hrs. Build, Create, and Get Hired

It started as skimming through web archives and seeing the elusive hackathon that once existed for Startup Week prior to 2019. This mere mention left an impression, as it grew and captivated me for why we needed it now more than ever. I mainly thought of it as a way to showcase hungry engineers to VC backed startups, but it evolved into a way to united the general community. Open with no application, it was just pure fun with great sponsors from Adobe and Anthropic alongside our startups Soar and Capybara.

When we started in November, we knew we had 4 months to lock in. We looked to Treehacks and CalHacks as a model, learning how to do things as first timers. We reactivated long lost relations, established new ones with Anthropic under Drew Bent, and integrated with the startup ecosystem with Verci's gracious lending of their flatiron venue. I wont lie and say I did this myself. It was a team effort to turn a dream into reality, and I am immensly grateful for my team at Tech@NYU to help me realize this.

Winners, Finalists of Buildathon 2025

Meet Startup Professionals

A partnership with Supermomos, a growing community based startup in NYC. Just a simple event bringing together founders, professionals in Series B to students. It became my training ground to host bigger events, learning how to handle all the adminsitrative tasks that my previous leads Tanuj and Indeera shouldered among themselves. I still appreciate the event, for giving us a bigger network to tap into aside from cold outreach and alumni, one where we seem ever more connected to the startup ecosystem of NYC.

As a moderator, hearing how these professionals approached the attitudes of working in various startups alongside the importance of culture and a go-getter attitude, I couldn't ask for a better set of professionals who took time out of their busy schedules to provide valuable insights and mentoring to students. They also showed the important power of placements, helping put our students in front of the right people. This event largely influenced by late desire to host Buildathon, as it showed we needed a way to now show our engineering talent to startups.

The wonderful speakers + michael & I