About me

This is the long version. I recommend the short version on the home page. But if you are really curious about me, my story, and what I've been up to, then read on. I last updated this on January 2025.

Over the last decade, I've helped build multiple engineering teams and systems that scaled to millions of users.

As an early engineer at an eCommerce startup called Jet.com, I grew into an engineering leader. That startup sold to Walmart for $3.3 Billion. At Walmart, I grew to a Senior Director of Engineering. My teams and I built Pharmacy Tech, with over $35 Billion in annual revenue and 100m patients.

But I decided to leave that career behind for entrepreneurship.

Coming from poverty, walking away from guaranteed money as an employee wasn't easy for me. I tried a few times to quit and couldn't bring myself to do it. I immigrated to the U.S. from a young age; I was born poor in Albania. Then I grew up poor in The Bronx, NYC, for most of my life too.

But I knew that if I didn't chase my dreams of entrepreneurship, I'd always regret it.

Before quitting, I tried to de-risk the move as much as possible by investing in real estate. And I've fallen in love with real estate on a small scale. I don't want to make real estate a full-time career, but part-time, I've found it's a great way to diversify into atoms from just bits and create some income.

Since quitting, I've realized that building an audience is an asset to entrepreneurship. It's a great way to help people and to have them help you.

As an introverted and sometimes awkward software engineer who's stared at screens way too much, I had no idea where to start. But I just started writing and tweeting my story and everything I've learned so far. In that process, I grew a sizeable audience. Although I still fall back to my hermit ways at times to just build things, I've found that it is very enjoyable to help and teach other people, too.

Since starting this entrepreneurial journey in September 2021, I've built multiple SaaS apps; some of them have flopped, and some have made a little money. I was an equal partner in a successful online community called Small Bets and I helped build that in its early stages. I've created courses and taught people live, which has made some money as well.

More than anything, so far, I've fallen in love with the freedom this entrepreneurial journey has given me. The freedom to be around while my kids are young, the freedom to work at strange hours, the freedom to work on what I want to work on and with who I want to work with.

My entrepreneurial heroes, like Charlie Munger, are all multidisciplinary thinkers. Since starting this entrepreneurial journey, I like to believe I have become more multi-disciplinary myself, and I write about that a lot. But over time, if I can think at a fraction of the level my heroes were able to think at, I will consider that a big win.

So, I am on this entrepreneurial journey: experimenting, building, and learning. My philosophy has become build, teach and get taught. In the longer term, five years plus, my hope is that some of the things I build and collaborate on building can turn into a more durable business.