I’ve been away from writing for a couple of months now, so this is recap post for the initial few months when I landed back in Lahore.
*Months of Feb - April 2026

Rebirth in Spring

The first thing that happened when I landed back in Lahore was Basant. And what a glorious time it was, after 20 years the entire city was breathing a collective sigh of relief. Everywhere you looked you saw smiles and for a short weekend it seemed a collective euphoria had descended over the whole city.

Everywhere you went, there were colorful kites in the sky, flowers in full bloom, and a twinkle in everyone’s eyes. The weather was glorious, the food was tantalizing, and for that brief magical moment, Lahore had let her guard down and embraced everyone.

As someone who’s wandered around (14 moves in the last 15 years), there’s a confusion about where “home” is. But I guess home is wherever you can go back: no questions asked, no excuses needed. It’s always good to be back home.

Paying it forward

While I was coming back to Lahore, my thoughts kept going back to what Ali said when he mentioned founder-market fit. So the ball kept rolling and I realized: perhaps the best use of my time as I rediscover what I need to do would be to help people with some career advice.

That led to the creation of CSSNorthstar, a civil service exam guidance tool. Over many weeks and many iterations, I managed to design the product, and using some “innovative” techniques, managed to get a lot of data to power its insights. I also realized that this would be a good starting point to develop more personalized tools that can help people learn better and much more quicker by utilizing the recent developments in AI. The potential to provide the same level of expert coaching at scale was humanly not possible till now. Oh the excitement…

A chance reconnection

While we were on the topic of building things, Venture Institute was going on in full swing, and I finally managed to bag my certificate at the end. While this was going on, I got a call from my old buddies Ali, Saad, and Fahad, who had recently launched their product Grona (go check it out if you want to have agentic re-do of your website, in real time, for each unique visitor).

Ali wanted my feedback on some fundraising, given I was a freshly minted VC (despite any actual deals or fundraising at that point). I made my way available, and towards the end of our lunch meeting I informed them about CSSNorthstar. Saad immediately told me one of our undergrad friends, Zayad was also in town after spending more than a decade in the US, working across Google and Silicon Valley startups.

“He’s working in education too, I think you guys can share some ideas. He was supposed to be here a while ago.”

Despite my propensity to exit-stage left as soon as I’m done with a meal, I stayed back to catch up with the trio. Eventually Zayad showed up, right when I was about to head out. I was happy to learn that Zayad had read the first 2 installments of the Universe is in control, and we didn’t waste a lot of time catching up over the last 15 odd years when we last met.

We chatted about 10 minutes about what we were up to. Zayad told me about what he was building. I told him about what I was planning on introducing. He told me about the unique insight he had when he hit a wall about 2 months ago. I told me him about the distribution channels I had been exploring and gotten confused about.

In the 10 minutes, we sort of realized that we were both working on the same problem, but from different angles. We also realized that we were on the cusp of something that was potentially world-changing. We decided to meet again and take things up a notch.

That 10 minute conversation turned in to something that I’ve been working on since then…and the next installment will definitely be much exciting for all loyal readers of the Universe is in control.

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Week of February 1-5, 2026

Before I had set out to the SF Bay in mid-2025, my friend Tony, a Chinese entrepreneur based in Pakistan, had recommended that I should visit China if I were interested in AI. The Chinese are, after all, the only other nation besides the Americans who have made enormous strides in tech and AI over the last 2 decades (cheers, Alibaba 🥂) been at it for a while and are pretty good at what they do. He offered to depute a local handler/translator for me and make introductions with every business that he possibly could.

I texted Tony before I had booked my flights out, and asked him if the offer was still on the table.
“Do you have Chinese visa?” He asked.
“I do!” I replied.
“Then go straight, I will take care of everything.”

Well Tony, you’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse.

I found a cheap(ish) flight making its way to Guangzhou and the fact that Guangzhou had a direct flight to Lahore made it really convenient. This was the first time I was crossing the international dateline, with the flight hugging the Alaskan Coast and coming down over Siberia.

Back in the (Greater) Bay

For those who don’t know, Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong province, also known as the factory of the world. Back in the 2010s, the Chinese government decided to make the Pearl River delta perhaps the largest urban agglomeration in the world, and christened it “The Greater Bay Area.” Straddled by Hong Kong (Finance) in the East and Macau in West (Gambling/Entertainment), the GBA with 9 cities including Shenzhen (known as the tech/startup hub of China) has the largest urban population in the world. While originally looking to mimic the New York metropolitan area or SF Bay, it’s now become a beast (dragon?) in its own.

I came back to Guangzhou after almost 12 years, and while the infrastructure development wasn’t a surprise, what really impressed me was the calm and cleanliness, something glaringly missing when I last visited. This time it felt that the portal between HK and China had flipped - where Hong Kong was grittier and grimier, while Guangzhou was more “corporate” and refined. And you can’t really explain the skyline or the scale of the city by just writing about it. So I made a video to share:

The other thing I noticed was the proliferation of a more “Westernized” aesthetic. Guangzhou was always more cosmopolitan given it was a port and trading hub and the heart of the Cantonese diaspora, but this time around I noticed the cafes, malls, and pubs weren’t knock-offs of western companies, but rather had their own unique flavor (think “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”, but evolved).

Year of the Fire Horse

I had the privilege to meet a lot companies in Guangzhou over the course of 4 days, both in the AI space and traditional Chinese industrial powerhouses. One thing that absolutely blew me away was the sheer scale of industrialization that China had achieved: it possibly has more industrial capacity installed than the rest of the world combined. And this has been China’s masterstroke in breaking Western hegemony. The way Europe and North America has been deindustrialized, it will probably take them 2-3 decades to reinstall industrial capacity back again, if that’s even possible at this stage.

As Western AI has focused more on rewiring the knowledge economy,

With Western AI (read LLMs) looking to redesign work through agents and produce more generative AI slop for eyeballs, China’s focus seems to be industrial AI. They have enough factories, sensors, production data etc. to train their vision and other models to self-improve to the point of…absolute abundance? I don’t see what the point is, but its possible that traditional products won’t need any brains so they can put all their engineers to develop world beating tech.

A few glimpses of things I saw at these super factories, which were basically campuses the size of Google HQ. The only difference is that each company had multiple campuses spread across various cities in China, and sometimes abroad too!

China’s Sputnik Moment

Having seen how industry, policy, academia and commercial application came together, I am going to make a bold prediction:

2026 is going to the year that China develops fully autonomous urban mobility through self-driving vehicles and thereby real-world AI, overtaking anything the world has produced

The way Chinese are going to achieve it is because they are treating vehicles like nodes in an urban ecosystem, and with advanced 5G, AI models, and enough sensors to capture and process more data than anything seen in human history, finally be able to achieve total vehicular autonomy. Instead of making cars “smarter” by adding more sensors and compute in the vehicle, each vehicle will simply be a node in a large mobility system that will speak to each and every other node and adjust itself accordingly.

To develop such a system that would work flawlessly would be nothing less than a miracle, but the amount of energy, compute, tech know-how and single-minded focus required to pull this off is something perhaps only China can achieve. While California couldn’t operationalize a single mile of high speed rail starting in 2015, China developed the world’s largest high-speed rail network starting in the same year. Again, that rail-network is larger than the rest of the world’s high speed rail networks put together.

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Month of January 2026

January was a blur and slow-moving train wreck in equal measure, with wrap-ups, packing up, and a crossing the international date line.

End of the Beginning

January brought more omens than an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Woke up one fine day to see the building across from my room on fire (yes, this is the view from my room)

The Universe was sending me a message, after all. Both JUMP AI and Spoqen had not managed to find product-market fit, and given that we were unsure with the direction that I was supposed to go in (along with my impending visa deadline), we decided to part ways. It was time to look for the right kind of product and the right kind of market.

Meetups

I still managed to crank out a few meetups and visits. Besides attending Paklaunch’s Meetup in Fremont, my sister flew all the way from Sydney for her orientation and sales conference at Strip, so I decided to pay her office a visit.

I was also invited by my friend Jessica to visit her at UC Berkeley, where Andrew Reddie invited me to attend his opening lecture for his AI and Public Policy course. I was admitted to Berkeley’s MIMS program back in 2020, which I couldn’t attend because the Fulbright Program (and USEFP) decided that spending $92,000 extra on me wasn’t worth it, so it was a heartening experience to have sat an attended a lecture at UC Berkeley.

To Boldly Go

Towards the final week of my stay, Alan (my housemate) recommended that I take a shot at Venture Capital.

“How exactly do you suggest that Alan? I don’t have millions to invest, otherwise I wouldn’t be here!”
“Actually, Sherry. There’s this program called the VC Lab, and they teach people how VCs operate and how they are formed. I think you have the right personality for it, and it’s a great way to network with present and future VCs!”

Well, I’ll be damned. Sign me up!

After a brief application process and an interview, I was in the VC Lab! And they weren’t kidding that this would require 15 hours a week to get done. It has been quite an enriching experience, and has opened many doors (and also my mind) as to what can be in the realm of possibilities for setting up my own startup, or helping others build their own…keep watching this space!

In true Bay Area fashion, I received a little gift from a glamrock-hippie-oracle, which further explained what I needed to do with my remaining time. If you google the title, you’ll understand a bit more…

A special mention to a little stunt/adventure I pulled, where I left Oakland, went all the way down to San Jose and then back up the East Bay after meeting my sister, and 2 other friends, using all conceivable means of transportation (BART, Bus, Caltrain, Uber). Turns out not many people have achieved this feat despite living in the Bay 😎

While this might be the end of this stint in the Bay, stay tuned for what’s happening on the other side of the world - you wouldn’t want to miss the next installment of this substack!

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

*Month of December 2025

I’m clubbing all activities of December into a single post, because post-Thanksgiving slow down was real, and I didn’t get much done (I’m also a couple of months behind my updates and I need to pen them down before I’m sidetracked and completely lose count of what transpired). It also gave me some time to pause and reflect on some of the work I was undertaking and whether it made sense to keep pursuing it.

Viva Las Vegas

December kicked off with a little midweek trip to Las Vegas, courtesy of my friend Andrew Miller who was flying back after visiting his family and asked me to join in him. I naturally said yes, because, well why wouldn’t I?!

It was off season in Las Vegas but there was still a lot of hustle and bustle in town, which is poles apart from when I visited Macau more than a decade ago. The most interesting thing was the variety of events that were taking place in the same week on the Strip. On hand, you had the AWS re:invent conference, which meant an army of geeky techbros wearing checkered shirts and laptop bags roaming around trying to find the next keynote speaker. Then, there was the largest weed industry conference, which meant the shiftiest guys throwing hundred dollar chips around the casino tables. And finally we had the National Finals Rodeo, which meant every kind of cowboy and cowgirl you could imagine, strutting around (mostly Downtown).

P.S. The MS Excel World championships (yes, your least favorite spreadsheet) was also taking place at the same time. Except those guys never left their event hall.

Taking off with Spoqen

Olivier invited me to move from an advisory role to an ops role with him and his cofounders (Vesko and Clark) on their startup “Spoqen”, a voice agentic AI platform to help businesses improve their inbound lead conversions. Specifically, Olivier’s friend Max had requested him to develop a proof of concept to allow his SaaS platform to incorporate a voice reservation system. What started off as a Master’s side-project for these young guns has slowly morphed into a product that could be scaled across different legacy industries. This could also be an opportunity where I could put my name on a scaleable product and extend my tenure in the SF Bay.

Dividing my time vibecoding between Spoqen and JUMP, I learnt about browser automations, burning through tokens and understanding more about open source voice tools.

Our demo with Max went better than anyone expected, given that 24 hours prior we had lost access our system prompt that we were using for VAPI (our voice AI platform) and Vesko had to redesign the browser automation due to UI changes in the CRM we were trying to plug the voice AI in to. Guess they’re right about never having a dull day when you’re trying to build a product!

A few goodbyes

Towards the end of the month it was clear that JUMP was hitting a roadblock. Many larger companies had announced similar products that we were trying to build, which meant that we were at least a year behind actual product specialist engineers who weren’t actually vibecoding, unlike us. Scott also had a medical emergency in the family and had to head to Sydney before Christmas, which meant we didn’t have enough time to actually work on JUMP anymore. It was a good way to learn to cut losses and understand where team interest might not align with individual goals or market realities.

Another bittersweet goodbye came after Rush was done with his Demo Day at YC. His 3 months in SF had come to an end, and now it was time to return to the East Coast to be Anna (his expectant wife) and keep chipping away at his startup. Given that he managed to raise $10 million by Demo Day surely made that flight back a little more bearable. To celebrate his success, we relived the old times and went to a watch Paul Oakenfold play in San Francisco. Geriatric millennials that we are, it was quite amusing to see Gen Xers enjoy Oakenfold’s late 90s/early 00s hits with their Zoomer kids. The fact that 12 years later we were on the other side of the Pacific, in a dingy club, in Cantonese town(!) made us realize that we never really left Hong Kong.

The end of December bought another hearfelt goodbye, but that dear reader, is for another medium altogether :-)

A little holiday cheer

Given the slightly extra time on my hands with the slowdown and self imposed procrastination (DOOMSCROLL), I did manage to partake in some festivities to alleviate the rather cold and wet second half of December.

The wrap up the year, we saw Swedish House Mafia perform in San Francisco for New Year’s Eve!

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Remaining month of November (10th through 30th)

It’s Scorpio season, Thanksgiving’s on the horizon, people are slowing down for the end of year festivities, and also my birthday month. Vibe-coding till the tokens run out and rampaging through events, I received an additional invite join my friend for his venture.

Events Attended/Founders Met:

• Lenny’s Newsletter Meetup in San Francisco: Lenny Rachitsky has one of the most widely read newsletter’s in San Francisco, focusing on mostly product and growth. Naturally, a lot of startups want to be featured in the newsletter, and some end up sponsoring these meetups. Obviously Lenny doesn’t show up to these events, as his associates run the show. Go for the free drinks and maybe find 1-2 interesting startups or people to have a conversation with.

• Shannon Smith/YakTech.io: I acquainted Shannon through an online pitch competition hosted by Startup Grind where she took first place. Based out of Seattle, she visited SF for a conference and we decided to grab coffee. She’s as CPA, a female founder, and currently looking to raise pre-seed funding!

  

• STAK Ventures Pitch & Panel Event: STAK Ventures hosted another panel for startups from a range of industries. More than the startups, I felt the highlight was the panel which comprised of some solid Silicon Valley operators and VCs. Hearing their candid feedback on some pitches was refreshing (one panelist proclaimed: “I don’t even look at the TAM/TOM/SOM slides if you’re building a product in a developing a new market, because let’s be honest those numbers are bullshit!’)

• THE DROIDS STRIKE BACK - Hackathon: AI + Hardware hackathon! Scott and I decided to take a crack and also mingle with other AI embedded products developers to see how far vibecoding could take us. It was a day long endeavor, with lots of teams showing up on a Saturday to have a crack at winning some in kind prizes, and put themselves to potentially make their way to some pre-seed accelerators.

  

  Weekends in SF are for hackathons, and this was no different (I had seen 48+ hour hackathons that filled up quickly, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary). So I did the most important thing first: raided the snack station and got enough quantities of trail mixes, seltzer and “high quality” snacks to last us till the late evening. I wasn’t going to survive the whole day just eating Costco pizza slices. Our target was to get our AI Avatar to mimic motion capture and then follow basic commands, and be projected on our display box.

Unfortunately we couldn’t get the display going, and despite getting enough API tokens our motion capture was still not robust. But hey, we got positive feedback on the concept and some Meta and Amazon AI engineers gave us props for having the guts to pitch! 7/10 would recommend.

• Vishal Chamaria / Xuman.ai: I met Vishal at one of the STAK space events a few weeks earlier and instantly struck a chord. His startup was leveraging years of experience working in the youth services in Las Vegas. Vishal invited me to visit his office, and the most amazing thing I saw was that his family was equally involved in helping to develop the core engineering infrastructure of what he’s built, an “OS for human services”.

  

• AI Meetup with Award Winners: I had missed a few opportunities to visit the AWS Builder Loft, which regularly hosted high value events for enthusiasts in their FiDi building. This time, I managed to get off the waitlist and actually get a ticket to the show! It was a long drawn out event with panel discussions, individual presentations and such. After spending an hour or so, I felt like I was in a university lecture hall listening to researchers harp on about AI and its potential. Could’ve given this a pass tbh.

  

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Seeing my enthusiasm for working on an AI+LLM agentic product and simulatenously trying to ship new features for Superconnector almost every other day, Olivier invited me to join him for his agentic voice AI project reservation that was commissioned by a client. It seemed like the fastest way to build and scale a product: we had a paying client, a product-market fit, and the opportunity for scaling if the MVP functioned properly. Why would I say no to something that could potentially push my chances of helping me get in to an accelerator?

So I said yes with the caveat that I can only commit 3 days of the week to them, while retaining time for the other two. Naturally this was a workaround, but all parties seemed satisfied. To the extent that I was invited to conduct a podcast interview as a guest interviewer. I guess there’s a first time for everything…

While it made up for an oversaturated calendar with all different colors and combinations of activities, in just a few weeks it started to feel like a job - clocking in and delivering outputs with deadlines then moving to the next day. The fact that my calendar was choke full of extra-curricular activities for the entire month meant I had too many distractions than I needed. Oh well, I was never a slave to my calendar 🙃

Soul Searching on Turtle Island

Between half-baked, cancelled trips, Thanksgiving morphed in to one of the most beautiful and spiritually awakening moments of my entire trip. I was informed of the Thanksgiving Day morning prayers by indigenous tribes of California and Pacific Northwest, who come together on Thanksgiving morning to lead a prayer and traditional Powwow to commemorate the struggles against colonization of Native American lands and tribes.

The location is Alcatraz Island, the sight of numerous historical atrocities, revolts, and awakenings. We were politely asked to not take photos or videos during the ceremony, but you can read and envision the glorious ceremony here. This year’s prayer specifically mentioned ICE and the Palestinian resistance, and parts of me were moved which usually found it hard to put my finger on my inner unease over our collective silencing of my own colonial past.

The ceremony started at dawn, and we queued up to get on the free ferry at 3AM. Turns out most people had bought their tickets in advance and now we were on standby. Hours passed, and as the final ferry was ready to depart at the crack of dawn, it looked like my crew and I would be left behind. I knew that we’d make it of course, and you can imagine the relief on everyone’s face and the smile on mine as I was the last person to board the last ferry. Obviously, the Universe is in Control ✨

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Fortnight of Oct 27 - November 9

An action packed fortnight, with attendance at my first hackathon, giving back to local community and trying to figure out how to find someone’s AI tool that doesn’t involve going through an exact keyword Google search.

A week for many firsts (activities):

• The World’s Fastest Hackathon for WhatsApp Agents: Which also happened to be the first hackathon that I attended in my life. I entered the hackathon trying to integrate a WhatsApp agent in to SuperConnector to record in-person meetings through voice recording, to be summarized and transcribed later (the idea: record an interaction on your phone’s voice recorded or send it directly to the WhatsApp number, and let the backend take care of everything. I know, I know, it’s a hack, not a product, relax). The hackathon took place in a fancy building in FiDi at the Datadog HQ (I still don’t understand what Datadog does, but seems to be about “observability” which seems important)

  

• BRIDGEGOOD Presentation:

  I was lucky enough be invited to BRIDGEGOOD, a local non-profit in Oakland to deliver talk on my vibe-coding journey and building products to try and encourage others from non-tech backgrounds to get building their own products. It was a great experience having made a inroads into the Oakland community in such a short time that they’d invite me to give a short talk.

  

• Building AI Products with Pakistani Talent:

  This event coincided with the Tech Crunch Disrupt 2025 where a large contingent of Pakistani software development companies (dev shops) were vending their services. In true Pakistani fashion, the event started an hour late because the visiting delegation was trying to find a place to have dinner. The talk from Pakistani founders based in SF was short and to the point, although the dinner might have taken precedence for most of the proceedings for the evening.

Three Days at a Tech Conference

The last few days of October are when TechCrunch organizes its Disrupt conference to capitalize on the final days of the Bay’s summer, before the 9-5 crowd starts clocking out for Thanksgiving and the holiday season.

I had actually bought the 3 Day Pass before I even landed in the U.S. thinking this would be a good way to see what people in the Bay are building.

Needless to say there were ALOT of AI startups pitching their products, but was was most striking for me was the number of non-Bay area startups which far outnumbered the local startups. There were a lot of startups from different parts of the US, and quite a significant number from other countries. In fact, there were pavilions for various countries’ public sectors reps (Pakistan included) that were pitching themselves as the next big thing in AI and tech (hint: they aren’t).

Below are some of the eye-catchy booths I came across. I took infinitely more photos and attended a few sessions as well, and by the afternoon of the second day most people recognized and I recognized them back, but I’ll save you, dear reader from a dump of poorly shot photos:

My favorite thing about the whole event? The free coffee and snacks that some of the startups (and old established tech giants) were offering to lure people to their stalls. Guess the tech world isn’t as different from any other industry trade show with a thousands of window-shoppers like myself.

I even ran in to some people that I had met at different tech events around SF, and I could tell there were a few side eyes of “wtf are you still doing out here?” Needless to say by afternoon 3, everyone had gotten a little tired of the same conversations and the somewhat chirpy founders had lost some of the glimmer in their eyes. Trade shows are not for the faint of heart.

One question that I asked every booth representative was: “If I need to use your tool/tech/product, how do I find you?” Maybe my question wasn’t properly phrased, but most of the people struggled to answer, with “You can search online with our name!” being the most obvious response. You mean to tell me if I search for “CV killer voice AI” it won’t show me the exact tool I’m looking for? Basically in a sea of incomprehensible infrastructure layer AI tools, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, finding a tool to solve your problem is harder than it would seem. And with the deluge of products coming out daily, finding the something through a Google search or ChatGPT query might not be the most fruitful solution. It’s like the sitaution is ripe for a website that essentially a subreddit+craigslist for AI tools…

Getting In Bed With a Stranger

About a week ago I met Scott at one of the networking events at my building. We build a rapport around the fact that we were at the wrong event (HR networking) and connected over vibecoding. Scott painted a really interested picture: what if we had an Alexa-sized gadget in our house that could not only listen to you, but see you and talk back, potentially teach you stuff? His idea came from his father struggling to learn karate in retirement, as Youtube on his phone wasn’t really cutting it. The idea lit a bulb in my head where I thought how cool would be if I could have a personalized golf coach look at my swing and just give me basic instructions.

It was a perfect storm of ideas: motion detection, using LLM agents, voice AI, animation - all built by 2 guys who knew none of the tech and had all of the pro-subscriptions for Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot etc. Learning on the job took on a whole new meaning!

I followed up by paying Scott a visit at his beautiful home and both of us got down to picking up one thread of the process flow and got down to spending all of our expensive tokens. We didn’t have a proper discussion about it, but the word “founders” was casually thrown around a bit. In the words of a co-founder friend: “a co-founder is like a wife - the good ones last beyond the honeymoon period.” But I digress - we had a problem to solve and we were going to jump on it. Apparently part of the startup journey is not knowing when your hobby is turning in to a full-time gig!

After an action packed fortnight, it was only appropriate that we enjoyed the most important of American national holidays - Halloween:

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Fortnight of Oct 13 - 26

This fortnight has been a mixed bag of productivity, some lovely liaisons, and the realization that there’s no feeling more intoxicating than thinking the sun shines out of your backside. Thankfully, peers that equally celebrate you and give you a reality check in healthy doses are a blessing to have.

Events Attended/Founder Met:

• Transform East Bay Social : Transform is a global community of HR professionals, with the Bay being also the focal point for HR with a tech flavor. I basically attended to get some free snacks and chill in the sky lounge in my building, and test out SuperConnector. The event didn’t have much to offer (except the free drinks and snacks), but I did meet Scott... (more on that in a subsequent issue)

• Ali (Obvio): I spent a day down in Silicon Valley visiting Ali (my college mate + first colleague right after undergrad) and taking his feedback about building different tech products (he’s raised a couple of million for his latest startup, so he knows what he’s doing I suppose). It was quite an interesting experience meeting and chatting with his co-founder Dhruv and witnessing the sleepy hollow that is San Carlos, amongst other parts of the Valley.

• Beta University Startup Demo Showcase: Beta University is one of the local startup accelerators based in Palo Alto, showcasing different types of founders from all over the Bay. It’s been known to be the more ‘inclusive’ of the accelerators, basically because it doesn’t fund anyone and just let’s everyone come up and make a pitch. Shoutout to fellow Heinz alum Neelesh Lalwani whom I randomly bumped into (turns out we have a lot of common friends) and his startup fassport.

The Art of Unfu*king

These past 2 weeks, has been a lot of learning about debugging apps, beta testing, managing backend code and stretching my git skills (still have to google every day when I mistype basic commands, but I guess I’ll go easy on myself in this age). I have designed, debugged, tested, and shipped almost a feature or an improvement a day for SuperConnector. Most of these demands came from myself, thinking how I can make the it a better platform to connect with people. So everyday, it was a similar story: meet someone and show them the app, find an issue with my approach on solving the problem and think of a new solution, then go back to my laptop and start vibe-coding away.

At this point I would face the same issue that most people have with vibe-coding, in that Claude wouldn’t forget the previous context and try to build an entirely new product. With enough guardrails and git branches, I will able to put in an events page, context, selfies. The entire process is what I have started calling “unfucking” what the LLM thinks you wants, versus what you actually need. Usually the unfucking part takes longer than the actual building part, because what’s built is actually fucked. At this point, you have to ask yourself a simple question: “Do I delete/undo everything and prompt the system again, or do I try to explain it to fix what has just been broken?”

The answer (which I learnt the hard way), is that it’s usually easier to do the former and not the the latter. The difficult part is doing that, and not doubling down on unfucking because you let your ego or lifelong conditioning of digging yourself out of a hole get in the way of actually fixing a problem. Think of it this way: the cost of generating new code is essentially zero (since you’ve already paid for the monthly subscription for whichever LLM you’re using) and thus, you can simply teleport yourself out of the hole you currently find yourself in (and immediately start digging yourself a new one).

The Customer is King

Burning thorough a tiny rainforest just to be able to take selfies from your phone can be slightly jarring. Asking people whether they’d be willing to pay for your little baby startup is something that will rattle you. As Rush said by way of YC, the only time you know you’ve created something of value is when people are willing to pay for it. So I got my beta testers (i.e. housemates and close friends whom I had given the link to test out the flow and identify bugs) to respond to what they’d be willing to pay for. This was my feeble attempt at product-market fit, and received the following responses:

• “Add a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) plugin so that connections can land directly into leads and I’ll gladly pay you $20 a month!”

• “Add a voice AI agent that can take notes during the meeting and enter follow up points and I’ll pay you $25 dollars a month!”

• “If you can add a reminder for all the people that I’ve meet with in the week and not followed up with, I’ll pay you a subscription fee for it!”

Ali also made me realize that there was too much friction in signing people up for them to be able to connect with you, and that is the death knell for a consumer app in today’s day and age. So I had to design features that would make the app susceptible to being viral without having it go through the sign up route. I guess this was a crash course in GTM 101.

Needless to say, each demand was a new shiny toy that I had to rush after, a feature that I could build on top of the existing stack and prove to my potential paying customer that my efforts were worth their hard earned dollars. And each feature led me further down the rabbit hole that was teaching me the art of unfucking evermore.

We capped off the fortnight with two completely disjointed, yet equally important cultural events, that I had not experienced prior:

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Sep 22 - Oct 12

I’ve been behind my updates so this is going to be a longer submission. There are many reasons (procrastination, illness, shenanigans etc.) for the delay, but the primary reason is that I started to build an app using AI. What seemed like a week long project to prove to myself that I can develop a tool that fixes a problem/ some problem/ any problem turned into a part-time job (well technically full-time since I’m not working) that consumed my days and nights, and most of the time consumed my sanity. But at the end of the 2 or so weeks, I had built a fully-functional, customized PWA (progressive web-app) with some interesting features, for the grand total of $40 (as of the writing of this substack I have spent another $20, but who’s counting?). These weeks also made me slow down due to illness and some “domestic discord” that threw me off, but more on that later!

Events Attended / Spaces Visited:

• Noisebridge: Noisebridge is the most interesting creator space I have seen in my life. If there is anything that you need to build, there will be something and/or someone there that can help you build it. 3D printers? Check. Industrial laser cutting tool? Check. A full tailor-ship so you can stitch your Halloween costume? Check. Want to build a circuit board and a maybe your own GPU to run your own LLM? You might be able to pull out some chips and transistors here and there and figure it out. The most interesting part is that it’s an anarchist organization with no hierarchy or office holders - people simply volunteer their time and money and fix things themselves (as I was told during the tour: “If the toilet isn’t working, pick up some tools and fix it, or ask someone to help you. There’s no management here.”

  

• “Building AI agents for fintech and crypto”: 14.ai invited people over to chat about their agentic AI platform, feed uprooted people like me an amazing dinner and then teach everyone how to play Monopoly GO (it’s as problematic as the real thing). It was great to meet startup founders and operatives in the space, and see a startup house, where the entire founding team was living and building their product

• Ohmnow Office: I met John Marc at one of the earliest events I attended in SF, and was really inspired by his approach is solving an age old problem. John and his cofounder Finn are in their early 20s, trying to use AI agents to reduce costs for service technicians in various industries. After trying to set up a coffee chat for weeks, John Marc finally invited me to visit their office, where we chatted for more than an hour about AI, building, disrupting industries, and trying to find purpose.

  

Tinker...

So back to this app building business. I had been tinkering with vibecoding apps before I finally decided to it the old fashioned way, getting under the hood and learn the mechanics of what is being built, rather than having a prompt develop a surface level app for me. Vibecoding apps are great for generic websites and ideating, or getting a proof of concept, but in case you want it to do anything more (for example use your phone’s camera or GPS) you have to use various libraries and at that point it’s much easier to test and stage the whole thing on your local machine or a server manually. I discussed with Michael and a few others developers in my co-working space and after reading through various reviews of LLMs, decided on the VisualStudio Code + Claude Coding combo. The reason for this was the large context size for Claude Code and the native integration with VS without having to deal with lots of integrations, and I could use Claude remotely on my phone to dive in deep on topic and do research.

When I first sat down, I didn’t know Node.js from TypeScript, barely understood staging environments, and had no prior experience in building a PWA. And yet, somehow, with a Claude Code subscription ($20/month), VS Code, Supabase (free tier), Cloudflare (free workers), and purchasing a domain (on discount for $2), I was able to piece together something “real” in the sense I wasn’t relying on an existing platform to develop, iterate, and publish, but kept the control in my hand. Experiential learning, as I like to call it. Part of LARPing as a founder/tech-bro was having my own workstation with multiple screens, more to intimidate surrounding people than actually getting any work done; having three screens in front of me since my UBS days back in Hong Kong 2012 made me feel like I was being productive, even if I spent half time in the golf simulator (and the other half doom scrolling).

I had a bit of programming background in python for my grad school and once upon a time learnt to make webpages on GeoCities (google that Gen Z readers) after raw-coding HTML script in to notepad (hardcore, yes), but nowhere near as much experience as even a beginner level software engineer. Starting with a prompt giving it general directions of the product I wanted to build, it gave me a great first pass through. The general idea was refined, tech-stack was finalized and the README.md file was produced. Success! Anchors up and we were off sailing!

30% of the way on our course, and I gave it a loose prompt - it overengineered and rebuilt everything from scratch and that’s when I found out that LLM’s have a limited context window. We hit the first iceberg and our boat sank. I decided to SHIFT+CTRL+DEL the entire folder. The second attempt fared better but at about 45% I made the exact same mistake and a few poor prompts led to over-engineered code, broken logic, and features that didn’t make sense. SHIFT+CTRL+DEL one more time.

But third time was the charm. I started to apply some product management and techniques and asked Claude to adopt industry standards:

• Git control to track changes and avoid losing progress.

• Error logs to catch misbehaving code before it spiraled.

• Agentic personas to guide the AI toward desired outputs.

• Markdown instructions to maintain context across sessions.

I realized that trying to build, troubleshoot, and keen on top of things required the same focus as playing a notoriously difficult videogame. I had not been this obsessed with resolving bugs, optimizing mechanics, and pushing the app into production since I was devouring my favorite, most addictive games years ago. Every error message felt like a mini-boss, every successful compile like a checkpoint cleared. The thrill of seeing the app work — even in small increments — was intoxicating. Good thing LLM models have limited tokens and tell you to take a break - unless you want to fork out unlimited $$$

And in the end, the result was a stable, functional app — all done solo, in three weeks, for $40. No team, no formal training, just persistence, real-time learning, and a lot raging against the machine. So here, have a look at SuperConnector and comment below if you think this app can help gamify networking (or fix anything at all!) (note: as of the writing of this substack the app has gone through multiple new features and builds and is now at v1.7.1).

Tailor…

Could I have done this sitting in Pakistan? Probably. Would this have been this much fun? Definitely not. And the reason is to get some validation/cross check of your ideas. The October 6-11 was the San Francisco Tech Week, a week long bonanza of startups showcases and networking events, organized by a16z. This brought together thousands of people from outside San Francisco and even the United States together in SF for the week. From the thousands of events, this is what my calendar Unfortunately, I had an infected throat and had to take antibiotics for 10 days leading up to the SF Tech Week and and was quite devastated for the initial few days.

I did manage to make my way out to a few events in after the middle of the week, while also attending an event in the previous week. It was refreshing to see so many people fly in from various parts of the world. Most of them trying to see wtf was going on in SF, some of them trying to find VCs (there weren’t any of those around that’s for sure) and some of us were just looking for freebies (like me).

It was refreshing to see other individuals trying to find out their path, pitching their ideas and seeking validation to grow. It was evident that some of them knew how the game worked (met a number of “3rd Time Founders”), but the thing that I admired the most was how encouraging everyone was for each other’s ideas, even if for a layperson like me most of them didn’t make sense. It’s different coming from a culture or line of work where conformity is seen as the desirable mode of conduct and even genuinely good ideas are struck down for being too ambitious, while during TechCrunch I had an individual tell me that given I had invested time and money in developing an app, even if vibecoding, it made me an entrepreneur. I felt elated.

Soldier…

A neighbor whom I thought I had cordial relations with, got drunk and picked a fight with me. This is when I swapped apartments to be with my closer friends. I threatened to report him to the cops and the building management and get him kicked out, but he doubled down and threatened to physically assault me. I went to the security office and he barged in from the entrance and tried to punch me. Security took care of him and asked me to report it to 911. Quite dramatic. As of the filing of this report, I have received no word from the police about pressing charges, no word from the leasing company to cancel his lease, and also not have come across him in the building. Sheesh.

At least my homeboy Henry was kind enough to take me for a dinner to calm the situation.

Sailor

Working through the prompts and bringing the vision back to life (and having to put in hundred of error logs) I had a moment of insight: in the age of AI, technology is no longer the primary barrier to entry. Sure, you still need a team of individuals to work through and make the app/service/functional, but it’s how you think about a problem and how you approach a solution. Is software development as an industry about to be obsolete? Watch this space.

The weeks were capped off with a few concerts and events, but my favorite time was watching the full moon behind the Oakland Hills reflected off Lake Merritt

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Week of Sep 15 - Sep 21

It’s been 4 weeks since I boarded a plane and ended up on the other side of the planet, but it feels like I’ve been here for much longer than that. Some locals that I’ve met tell me I have the self-assurance of someone who’s been around for years. I guess I’ve already faked it, so just a little more time to go before I “make it”? Perhaps it’s San Francisco itself that that is being kind to me - while there are dozens of events happening every week, and people are seemingly always switched on and looking to pitch their next billion dollar idea or raise their next funding round, there’s always a calm over the Bay. Call it the No-Cal vibe or whatever you may, but there are always people around whose demeanor suggests that they’re not fussed by whatever upheaval is happening in the world of tech this week. It could be because they’re part of the the very large and prominent counterculture community that makes up the true essence of San Francisco; but far more likely they have actually made their millions as tech-founders many years ago and now they just surf and invest in startups occasionally. Anyway, it’s as easy to detach from the AI goldrush as it is to be a part of it, and that’s why SF is easy on the nerves.

But one question that was posed to me keeps raising its head: “What’s your value proposition?” What is it that I bring to the table that tens of thousands of others don’t already in this town? As a “specialist generalist” that’s something that I’ve struggled with for the longest time: am I really actually good at something or am I condemned to be a jack of all trades? I guess there’s only one way to find out - just go out at do it!

Weekly Activities

• “Designing Future Payments: Stablecoins vs Bitcoin”: I’ve been interested in (and invested a tiny bit) in some cryptocurrencies. What better way to see what the global crypto community is doing than to go to one of their events, right? Bitcoin Presidio is the decentralization HQ of the decentralized currency in one of the most beautiful parts of town. Surrounded by Bitcoin enthusiasts from around the world (this was one of the events from a week of events, which I invited myself to), it was an interesting event hearing people talk about how the future of finance would take shape.

  

• Startup Grind All-Star Pitch Battle: I went to my first-ever Pitch Battle. Needless to say the high-energy and fervor from founders displaying their business ideas was quite enjoyable, even if the ideas themselves were slightly obtuse.

  

The “San Fran Shuffle”

I had been tinkering with vibe-coding apps to see if I could develop an app that would make networking more enjoyable and maybe gamify it. The idea came from my own interactions during the course of attending various events. I could see every conversation going down one specific route - at the end of an engaging and riveting exchange of ideas, we would reach an awkward moment of exchanging contact information. What I call the “San Fran Shuffle” would ensue:
-“Hey it was great talking to you, we should connect and catch up again!”
-“Yes I agree! We should connect, and then reconnect, to have connection going!”
-“Great! More human interaction! Just what my therapist recommended!”
-“How do we do that? Maybe use our smartphones?”
-“Yes that sound logical, but what do we share? You’re too unfamiliar for me to give my phone number, but I still want to remember the context and what value you can bring to my fledgling billion dollar idea. Shall we exchange our LinkedIn profiles?”
-“Definitely! I will not remember your name or what you did but at least I’ll see you post about something weeks from now! Let’s do it!”

20 years of smart phone and digital contact cards and Silicon Valley has regressed to using LinkedIn to get people to barely remember each other. I need to fix this issue my own sanity. And although I don’t have a background in app development, barely know a bit of coding and have no clue what backend staging means, I’ve got an idea to stitch together a solution. Watch this space!

A Message from the Universe

As the initial fervor and excitement of moving in to the Bay, creating a network, and finding inspiration dissipates, reality checks in with me every now and then. A lifetime of conditioning has designed most of us to build our own cages for ourselves and then try to justify living in them. One of the “plans” I had when I initially moved over was to meet as many founders in the Bay to try and understand which direction the wider technology world was moving to. While it’s relatively straightforward to attend events and be a spectator, it’s still hard to grasp the scale of what’s happening - EVERYONE in SF is building something, anything, all the time. There are individuals who’s life revolves around pitching, iterating, fund-raising, building, exiting, and rinse & repeat.

So my idea was to play the game with them. What’s the worst that could happen? Well turns out when you’re trying to play by other scripts and playbooks, it takes focus away from what and who you are as an individual. I found myself rushing from one event to another, trying to strike up conversation with people and probe what problems they were trying to solve. And at the end I found myself coming up short of my own expectations. I could feel that I was burning myself at both ends and hitting my head against a wall, and coming up short. And still, not clear on what my value proposition was - could I actually bring something of value to the world?

And then, serendipity. Sometimes you come across people who are there to reinforce your mission and reinvigorate your belief in whatever you’re doing. At one of the events I came across an individual who sought me out, and told me they were compelled to speak with me. I was elated, because I had felt the same way when I first entered the venue. They were only in town for the event, and wanted to have a conversation before they left. Despite back to back events over the next few days, I managed to squeeze in a slot to visit them again. What was supposed to be 25 minute meeting turned in to an hours long conversation, about life, ancestors, beliefs, and the key word: “purpose.” At the end of the conversation, I received a a very important message:
“Stop chasing. Everything you need is already within you.”

The entire interaction left me feeling like a bolt of electricity had gone through my body. Rather than rushing to make it to my next event, I decided to stay back and take a beautiful ride through the Presidio and visited some old friends from Pakistan for a family-oriented dinner. Sometimes all one needs is a little reminder of home. A little reassurance that your value proposition lies in believing in yourself and being the best version of yourself.

Something exceptional also happened this week - one of the my closest friends and all-round amazing human being Rush was selected for Y Combinator and moved to SF from NYC to be a part of their local residency program. I already told him I’m his first unpaid intern and he doesn’t have a choice. His smile probably masks his enthusiasm for my unsolicited offer but I’m sure he’ll come around eventually.

To wrap up the week, we spent the day in the Golden Gate Park’s botanical gardens to enjoy live music, and then enjoyed a lovely dinner at Green’s Restaurant in SF’s Wharf overlooking the Bay.

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

(Note: OK so the newsletters will now be in startup mode i.e. ship fast & dirty and then update the typos and add more ‘features’ later, because LARPing as a writer takes up a lot of time. So please come back for some bug fixes)

**Fortnight of Sep 1 - Sep 15

I wake up weary eyed, and look over at my alarm.

[07:00 AM]

I hate waking up early. I’m on a sabbatical. But I need to wake up early, as part of my “reinvention.” I’m lucky to have friends around the world who are there to support me and pull me up with them. One of them is Enshe, who is an amazing Executive Coach based out of Singapore. She’s helped me through a series of one-on-one sessions on how to improve my understanding of what “success” looks like and to visualize the life I want to build. Part of the changes we’ve decided on is that I will wake up early every morning and journal my thoughts. I have also, for the first time in my life, starting maintaining a calendar. Yes, I’ve gone through life by keeping whatever priorities I had in my head. No, I have not missed deadlines or “important” things ever. Yes, I am getting old and probably need some help. I also put in all the mundane things (like lunch, gym, shower) and socializing in the calendar so it looks like I have a busy but productive day. And lastly, no, I don’t follow the calendar religiously; I’m not a slave to my watch!

I started off the week by starting my substack, which you, dear reader, are hopefully subscribed to. This week was quite happening because I went to more than 3 events in SF, to get a flavor of the city.

Events Attended

• “Build Your First AI Agent” : Sweet, that’s what I’m here for right? Turns out most people are there for the pizza and free beers. It’s a wrapper on top of a GPT that lets you tell your chatbot how to help you. It’s either too basic, or I’m too dumb to figure out what it can actually achieve.

  

• “Skyrocketing the Longevity Movement” : Ruby’s invite brought me my first Light DAO event. The topic was extremely interesting (how humans can live healthy and impactful life for 150+ years?) and I met some very interesting entrepreneurs and valuable insights on what kind of network I need to develop. Would highly recommend being a part of this community.

  

• The Art of Rolling the Perfect Joint : Part of the living experience in SF as “Yes” man is to fully immerse myself in the local culture 🤭

  

• Spacer RoboticsLaunch Event : AI and Robotics are also an interesting area. Apparently software is now finally catching up with hardware (?) and interesting things can happen in this space.

• Full Stack Founder Poker & Ice-cream Social : The Spice King of Zanzibar is a local celebrity who organizes multiple social events for people in the tech space including founders. I managed to play with the guy who developed many of Apple’s accessories.

  

Machine Men…

Just a quick shout out to the people I’m meeting on my journey who are giving me some guidance, motivation, or positive energy along the way. They are trying to solve problems that they feel will make the world a better place.

…with machine minds

The prompt screen looks at me. “I have made 79 changes to the code. Do you want to commit?” I stare back. “I don’t know Computer, I’m not sure if I’m ready for that much commitment right now in my life.” My inner monologue is hilarious, I know. I hit the Enter key anyway. What’s the worse that can happen? Some gibberish code will come out and whatever feature I’ve envisioned won’t be built? I’ll delete the folders and go to another vibe-coding app or AI-driven IDE. Its not like I’m building the nuclear bomb. This is the Brave New World we live in, where we’re all builders. But most of the time, I’m deleting garbage that the machine spews. Will we all become builders, or destroyers thanks to AI?

I spent the last week using every imaginable vibe-coding platform out there. Replit, Lovable, Base44, Cursor, Warp, Windsurf - you name it. I even got a special preview to a platform that my friend Abbas has built for his business. I will probably review these platforms on a separate (paid?) Substack article that I might be able to fleece these companies in to giving me some of that marketing moolah. Or maybe not.

But the platform or coding agent is merely a tool. The main question is: “What problem am I trying to solve?” There’s something that I realized was leading to friction in my networking efforts, and I thought I’d solve that problem for myself. The way things are going, I might have the working MVP ready soon!

I gave the LLMs prompts and they churned out something in a few minutes. The margins were off, so I asked it fix that. It completely re-did everything and then completely shot everything to shit. Great. I deleted the entire folder and started again. 2 days later I had something better than I had imagined. Then I asked it to test my ideas. An error arose and it prompted me whether it should try and fix the error. “Sure!” I typed “Go ahead and fix it!”. 5 minutes later it had written more code on top of everything, trying to fix a compiling issue I could’ve fixed in 3 lines of code manually. Everything was shot to shit again. I deleted the entire folder one more time. This might actually take much longer than I had hoped.

…and machine hearts

Charlie Kirk was also assassinated this week. It’s surreal looking back at this week and how things unfolded in the media and online. There’s too many layers to unravel, and I don’t want to bore you to death with things have transpired. But it’s always strange to be foreigner in the US (or even outside) and see the reverberations of the actions of a few men on the rest of world that has nothing to do, or wants nothing to do, with what happens from the lands between shining sea to shining sea.

As a brown, Muslim, man coming of age in the aftermath of 9/11 and how that completely changed the reality around me, I find it funny when people on social have been calling this a “watershed” moment in American politics. One thing is certain - the polarization in different pockets in the U.S. has reached fever pitch. But on the other-hand, the Bay Area seems to largely insulated from this. Perhaps because people here identify themselves on the other end of the political spectrum. Or perhaps this does not come under their crusade of choice. American's only debate about three things: guns, abortion, and LGBTQ rights. Everything else requires effort to change things about the way the world works and not just virtue signaling. Kind of like backing a sports team and actually playing the sport. And maybe that’s not a bug, when you have to live life under the star-spangled banner.

But I digress…there’s AI to be built on top of AI that is built on top of AI wrappers:

We capped off the fortnight by enjoying an afternoon/evening with Francis Mercier, DJ par-excellence North of San Francisco in the Vallejo suburbs

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

**Week of Aug 25 - Aug 31

I’ve got my tote bag filled to the brim, and somehow still managed to forget to buy toothpaste. This is going to be a recurring theme this week, trying to find grocery stores near my new apartment that I can get buy cheap items from (who am I kidding? This is California, everything’s twice as expensive as anywhere else in the world). The elevator door opens as I make my way up to my floor. A young person, a smile, a nod, the anticipation of having small talk. The enthusiasm is palpable. I take off my head phones.
“Gosh this building is so nice, right?”
“Yeah I really enjoy living here, it’s a good vibe.”
“How long have you been living here?”
“About 3 weeks now.”
“Oh no way! I moved in on Monday.”
“Oh wow, welcome to us both, I guess. Where were you living before?”
“Pakistan. I moved over literally two weeks ago.”
“Oh nice did you move for work?”
“Not really. I moved to figure out everyone is up to in the Bay Area!”

I reach my floor by the time the conversation comes to this point, but the curiosity and raised eyebrows are a constant. And that’s the best way to make friends.

Location, location, location

Before moving to the Bay Area, I had a few considerations in mind. Accessibility was a key factor given I wasn’t planning on buying a car (mobility suicide in the U.S. but given there’s public transit in the Bay Area it’s still bearable), so I had to be close to the BART. Based on my research, most of the networking and AI industry events take place in specific San Francisco neighborhoods. With that in mind I started scouring affordable and short-term housing on the usual suspects (Facebook marketplace, Craigslist et al). Babar (one of the friends/culprits who planted the seed for my move to the Bay) advised that I move in a “hacker house” that has co-living and co-working arrangements with a lot of young builders/founders/entrepreneurs under one roof. The idea is to live a high-energy, high-build, high-hustle immersive experience to break out of one’s shell and become a part of the momentum.

Hacker homes have been a mainstay of Silicon Valley culture, but there’s a catch - there’s an entire ecosystem around hacker homes that only caters to founders or those with some cred, unlike yours truly who’s currently operating on vibes. So I did what what was the second best option - scour for cheap, short-term co-living spaces in the Bay Area. The usual suspects were long standing co-living establishments in the somewhat dodgy parts of town that charged a hefty sum for essentially a bed inside a closet, and sharing a bathroom with 10 other people - not the ideal situation, but hey at least the location was somewhat central, even if near the famed Tenderloin district. However, thanks to Jeff’s exceptional SEO optimization skills, I managed to come across 1900 Broadway and STAK Space. It’s the only high-rise building that I came across in the entire Bay Area that provides co-living (shared apartments) along with 2 dedicated co-working spaces, with top of the line amenities. It’s a new development with a significant number of people who have moved in the past few months, so I was in the right place at the right time (hello, Universe?). A huge shout out to Colin Behring for placing this right on top of the BART station (15 minutes to SF downtown, when the trains operate that is) and Brian Sparkes for setting up a sandbox for East Bay dreamers.

The social animal in his natural habitat

The reason to give this background is to explain how the habitat is allowing me to develop a community of like minded people. Just by being in a large building with people who live here and work here (amongst others who use the co-working space) I’ve managed to run meet founders from:

• Australia, making an app to get over addictive behavior and impulses;

• Italy, making a cloud Saas platform that’s been selected for one the best accelerators in Silicon Valley;

• Netherlands, making a voice activated virtual AI assistant;

• India, stealth startup in the customer success space; and

• United States, for example AI-assisted recruitment personas for technical recruitment.

All of the above are founders who are residents in the building and whom I acquainted with while running errands. On top of that, STAK is the Oakland chapter of Startup Grind, and their launch event happened on the Thursday, the fourth day of my move-in.

What’s even better is the fact that once you befriend you neighbors, they introduce you to their network. San Francisco is built by and for those who want to see others succeed. What other sentiment would the VC model (or at least the original sentiment) be built upon if not the belief in people succeeding in their vision? It is because of this understanding that there are less gatekeepers and more networkers (even if you see the same people at different events; more on that later).

Oh and did I mention, STAK Space has 2 golf simulators? My swing has considerably improved

:

Year of the Yes Man

When opportunity comes knocking, one should open the door. Except I’m the one who’s knocking on doors right now. I don’t know where those doors lead, but I know I will walk through them when they open. Case in point: Startup Grind Oakland’s launch event that was happening at my building that was conflicting with another AI event that I had to attend in SF, but my friend Michael asked me to join him on the rooftop where the networking was happening before I headed out. I stepped out of the elevator and slipped my way past security to see Michael talking to a few people. Michael introduced me to Ruby Yeh, who upon hearing my background invited me to join by her organization Light DAO that focuses on conscious entrepreneurs and investors. All in the span of 4 minutes. Networking at the speed of light.

I also found out about the best place to see what kind of events are happening in San Francisco through Luma which lets you sign up for anything under the sun. And when I say anything, I mean anything (signing up doesn’t mean that you get in, but at least you know where the events are happening and who’s going in; I also managed to find out about Partiful and started getting invited to parties - shocking).

The rest of the week was marked with getting my apartment in order and running errands, trying to find places I could shop for groceries and exploring Lake Merritt behind my building. I also went to see a DJ (Demaya) who’s music I liked online. Turns out online was better than in-person. Oh well, not the worst $15 dollars I’ve spent on a night out 🤷‍♂️

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”:

People around the world have a difficult time pronouncing my name. It’s not their fault, it’s just how the Persian name is transliterated in to English (there are 10 different ways of spelling it, after all), and it doesn’t flow off the tongue. The more interesting part is telling people the story of my namesake, the primary pseudo-antagonist of the Arabian Nights. Most people know of Aladdin and Sinbad, but not the jarring backstory :)

But to friends and family, I go by Sherry - and I’d like to welcome you to follow my journey as I undertake the most unconventional leap of faith of my life.

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I wake up, look outside my window and see the clear blue sky above the Fox Theatre in Oakland. The Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge are visible in the distance. It still feels a bit surreal that I moved to the Bay Area with only the conviction that I was supposed to be here, at this place (the San Francisco Bay Area) and this moment (circa 2025). And so I packed my bag, bought a one-way ticket and moved to San Francisco mid-August. And so far, I feel like I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.

1. The What & The Why

This newsletter is part-blog, part-diary, and part-“keeping-me-accountable-so-I-don’t-go-off-the-rails.” It also is an opportunity for me to provide a window to people who are not privileged enough to be in Silicon Valley in what most technologists and futurists believe to be the watershed moment of our times.

For the past 2 years, my gut has been telling me that the world as we know is about to be drastically changed by the advancements in AI, Web3 infrastructure, and De-Fi. I’ve had a chance to invest in some pre-seed startups in my native Pakistan, and met some high energy and really, really smart people, all who’ve told me that the world has already changed, and the rest of us mortals don’t know it yet.

So here I am, trying to make sense of this Brave New World, trying to tinker with it and maybe chart a path for myself in it. You can have a look at my LinkedIn profile to understand a bit about my background and why I would stick out like a sore thumb amongst the 20-something tech founders and pizza+energy drinks fueled tech hustlers, although I am bringing myself up to speed with Agentic AI and all the advancements that come out at breakneck speed every week by enrolling in a rigorous online bootcamp (guess that Data Analytics degree from CMU might finally come in handy).

P.S. My LinkedIn post announcing my move to San Francisco received more than 26,000 impressions, which is beyond what I had imagined.

2. Who this Substack is for:

Besides my mother who is a bit concerned about what seems to be a raging mid-life crisis, this blog is for everyone who is interested in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, technology, startups and their founders, and ideas that may fundamentally change the course of humanity’s future.

Every week or (or fortnightly; I’m trying hard), I will be recapping my activities, starting with my sharing some personal insights, reviewing the events I attend, the places I see, and the people I meet - both within the tech space and outside. The Bay Area provides a unique mix of cultures and activities, and I’m planning to indulge in the fullest possible manner.

4. 3.“The Universe is in control”

2025 has been the year of many firsts, the most profound amongst them being my experience with psychedelics and the unbelievable ways they have changed how my mind operates. And by far the most important insight has been the statement above, which has become my mantra in life. So I’m giving up the illusion of control, and letting the flow of the Universe guide my path.

The Universe manifested itself when I was in the Bay Area in May this year, reconnecting with many old friends after decades. All of them asked me the same question: “Why don’t you stay here for a while? We feel like you can do something amazing here!” I realized that I had a hundred excuses not to (a job, visas, money, my house, some semblance of “responsibilities” and “stuff” to do), but I didn’t have a reason not to. And that was a very important distinction - one has to live a life of conviction, and everything else aligns accordingly.

For those of you who’ve known me for the first 37 years of my life would be surprised at this new-age spiritual b.s. I’m spewing, but I guess I’ve come full circle! And only one way to test my hypothesis - to put my money where my mouth is :)

5. 4. Quick Recap: Aug 14 - Sep 1, initial impressions

I flew in to Seattle from Lahore after a 2 day stopover in Doha (thank you Qatar Holidays), to attend my friend Ashish’s magical wedding:

His wedding was a perfect appetizer for the Bay Area: Ashish works at Meta, his wife works at Microsoft, his brother-in-law and most of the guests at the wedding work at startups in the Bay Area/West Coast. The wedding provided a perfect opportunity to connect with a lot of people and make in roads in to West Coast’s tech scene. It also provided for some more heart-felt connections (iykyk!)

Landing in SF

I was lucky to crash with my friend Saba, whom I reconnected with after 15 years back in May, while looking for a place to move in to. During the house-hunting week, Saba’s friend invited us to attend a tech event at the venue where she was a manager. We decided to take up that offer. Turns out it was THE tech event of the week, which we got in without having to pay the atrocious ticket price. Guess sometimes you just have to turn up for the ducks to start lining up.

I managed to find the ideal location for my stay, at a co-living space with 2 co-working spaces full of founders and remote tech workers in Oakland. The idea is to have an immersive experience, being surrounded by people who are building, iterating, and pivoting their way through life. Within the first week of living at my new abode, I managed to befriend more than half a dozen people in my building - people who embody the win-against-all-odds culture of what San Francisco is famous for. As the weeks pass, I will be chronicling their journeys and our crossing paths, too.

Thank you for reading this introductory post! Please feel to contact to me you have any feedback/suggestions/recommendations on what you’d like to see in subsequent posts.

If you enjoyed my writing, and would like to support my journey, please subscribe to my paid Substack, Buy Me a Coffe, or Venmo me (@shryarahmd). And follow me on X/Twitter!

Click here to read the next installment of “The Universe is in control”