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0Welcome to the Innovator Coffee, a podcast that bridges the gap between people and the world of AI and innovation. This is Wickey. Follow us to explore the top AI products, ecosystem insights, and the emerging trends.
Episode Summary
What does it take to build a real company before you're old enough to drive，or before you've finished college? Host Wickey digs into how two young founders found their own way in: the obsession that kept them building, the cold emails and competitions that opened doors, and the moments no one sees, a pitch that fell apart, a failed launch, being underestimated for their age. They get practical too, on pitching investors and going to market, and land on why their generation's real edge is shipping before they feel ready. Equal parts highlight reel and hard knocks, it's a look at what self-made looks like at 15 and 26.
Guest Bios
Aiden Shankar is a 15-year-old founder from SF Bay Area building SchoolACE, an AI-native ed-tech platform that provides a copilot for teachers and a personalized tutor for students, helping teachers with grading, content creation, and workflow automation, while giving every student personalized tutoring and support. He learned to code on Swift Playgrounds and picked up AI from Andrew Ng's online courses. Following this, he built SchoolACE the summer before high school and got selected as a Top 5 Conrad Challenge Global Finalist, one of the youngest among ~7,500 competitors, as well as winning the Startup World Cup qualifiers and a Stanford Business Competition. His startup is also a part of the NVIDIA Inception Program & Google for Startups.
Brandon Chen is the 26-year-old Series A founder of Intent, an AI-translation messaging app serving ~1 million users across 200 countries (within a year). He cold-emailed top university professors at high school until one let him into a lab and published two papers, then pitched his way from pre-seed to Series A.
Timeline (8 segments with start & end times)
1 00:03-01:33 Welcome & Introductions
Wickey introduces Innovator Cafe; Aiden (15, School) and Brandon (26, Intent) introduce themselves and their companies.
2 01:33-03:19 Realizing They Were Different
Each shares the moment their path diverged from peers.
3 03:19-05:48 What Sparked the Journey
The origins of their drive: Aiden's obsession with building once he had an idea; Brandon's first-principles cold-emailing of professors from a poor province.
4 05:48-10:17 First Contact with AI & Entrepreneurship
Brandon's 2020 GPT-3 experiments and junior-year game studio; Aiden's path from Swift Playgrounds to building School
5 10:17-16:09 Family, Peers & Hidden Struggles
Reactions from parents and friends
6 16:09-21:39 The Stage: Competitions & First Pitches
Aiden's first-place win at Stanford (15 teams from ~7,000); Brandon's co-founder pitching while he interned; his painful, cry-at-night first pitch and the road from seed to Series A.
7 21:39-30:41 Mistakes, Exhaustion & Resilience
Biggest mistakes (confidence; building for self vs. users); turning down a 20% equity offer; Brandon's failed Stanford launch and the solo open-source project that won back his team.
8 30:41- 36:44 Advice & Their Generation
Being underestimated for their age; whether their work lasts; advice to beginners ("build it overnight"); founders they admire; one word for their generation,"fearless", and go-to-market on Instagram.
Special thanks to Hannah Wang who did the wonderful job to assist to complete this podcast. www.linkedin.com
Host：Wickey Wang
*IT Security Compliance Leader & University Faculty
*Growth fund VC advisor, VC fellow and Angel Investor with cybersecurity and AI focus
*GAI Security book co-author & SafenAI co-founder
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