I left two corporate careers to find purpose in Silicon Valley. Instead, I found it solving the wrong things

He left law, then management consultancy, then a venture-backed parking startup, all in search of work that felt more meaningful. None of it quite landed. The law felt alienating. Consulting ended with him being let go. Startup life gave him speed and ownership, but not the deeper sense of purpose he was chasing.

The turning point came on a Christmas Day trip to San Francisco, when he wandered into the Tenderloin and saw a scene he describes as the bleakest he had ever encountered. That moment sat awkwardly beside the city’s extreme wealth, including the fact that one in every 14,000 residents is a billionaire. The contrast was hard to ignore, and it pushed him toward a very different kind of company.

His argument is blunt: while inequality widened over the past decade, technology focused on making the already comfortable a little more comfortable. Faster takeout, better ad targeting, slicker convenience. Useful, yes. But not exactly a heroic use of some of the best engineering talent on earth. Meanwhile, the people who most needed help were still getting tangled in systems that barely functioned.

He points to SNAP as a case in point. In fiscal year 2025, the program served an average of 42.1 million people each month, or 12.3% of the U.S. population. The USDA reported a national payment error rate of 10.62%, equal to $10.1 billion in improper payments. Most of that was overpayment, but some was underpayment too — eligible families not getting what they were owed.

That, for him, is the real software problem. Paperwork, outdated systems, handwritten notes and exhausted workers are driving errors in public services. A 2025 federal study found child welfare caseworkers spend 4.3 hours a day on paperwork and documentation, and national annual turnover runs around 30%. So he built AI tools for frontline staff and the vulnerable people they serve, with agencies in a dozen U.S. states now cutting admin burden in half.