Hey, I'm Calix. I love software and storytelling.

In my freshman year of high school, I found an interesting Udemy course on ethical hacking. I started down a rabbit hole of learning how to hack, code, and build software. I learned Python & data science, studied ML/AI for a bit, and began building full-stack web applications.

As I started to build my own independent projects, I was introduced to hackathons and became obsessed with attending them every other week. I won a few hackathons by making everything from event organization software to grocery pricing comparison apps. Leading up to COVID, I even joined a few early-stage startups as a software engineering intern.

After COVID struck, I continued building my own projects and working at various companies. I started working on my own companies, starting with Ortexo, a software umbrella company building products for students. It was acquired by NovaCrypt after a few months, and then I co-founded 1Academy, an online course platform focused on content curation rather than creation. Finally after that, I started Hours, a virtual studying platform for students, which was acquired by Fiveable after 6 months.

For a year and a half after the acquisition, I worked on a mixture of engineering, product, and growth at a bunch of different companies, some of being Fiveable, Uiflow (YC W21), Cornell, Beacons.ai (YC S19), and Kinetic. I was a fellow in the Atlas Fellowship and On Deck (ODC1, ODET2), and spent lots of time exploring various avenues and verticals in edtech.

Now, I'm a freshman at the USC Iovine & Young Academy, being 1 of 42 students this year studying at the intersection of design, computer science, business, and communication. I also joined Contrary as a Venture Partner, an early-stage VC firm. I spend much of my time meeting great founders and builders at USC, being active in various startup communities, and building whatever projects and ideas that come my way.