How I'm Becoming a Unicorn Person Before Building a Unicorn Company

January was about becoming a unicorn person before trying to build a unicorn company. But what did that actually mean?

Krishiv Thakuria

Feb 02, 2024

I came up with this line after January:

“Learn, build, and explore—based on your curiosity, and nothing more.”

This is the story of how I got there.

Highlights of this issue:

How I'm Becoming a Unicorn Person Before Building a Unicorn Company
Reducing loneliness by developing a custom Alexa skill with the Alexa Device SDK
How I turned my high school into my testing lab for Aceflow
What I’m learning from helping build the Stanford ASES Summit

I’m Krishiv—here’s a quick refresher on me 👋

I’m a 15-year-old from Toronto passionate about disrupting education with AI. I’m building Aceflow.org, a suite of AI-powered education tools that accelerate K - 12 learning outcomes. We’re backed by Microsoft for Startups and Emergent Ventures, and I’ve presented our work at GITEX Global, World Summit AI, and Microsoft Canada’s HQ. When people ask me how I’m balancing high school with this journey, I say it’s because I’m obsessed. Global human potential is on the line.

How I'm Becoming a Unicorn Person Before Building a Unicorn Company 🦄

I believe that everyone can find a calling in life.

I’m lucky to have found mine so soon. Or have I?

I’ve spent the last half a year building Aceflow.org to bring curriculum-specific academic support to all, with a mission to create the most frictionless studying experience for students.

The best part is, I’m building a product that I want. My philosophy behind building tools at Aceflow is only building what I wish I had sooner. I wanted to build a way for myself to study faster and get schoolwork done quicker, so I can spend more time building products of the future.

Designing, product, talking to users and iterating—it all sets my heart on fire. I can’t see myself doing anything besides building a startup or joining a startup fighting for a better future.

After I taught Computer Science at Dolphin Sr Public School when I was 13, I fell in hate with the wealthy-needy gap in accessibility to personalized academic support.

2 years later, I’m getting to build the solution I love for a problem I hate. And I’m obsessed in the most beautiful way. But this all begs the question:

Am I lucky to have found “my calling” so quick, or am I just blind?

A month ago, I didn’t know. So this was my experiment:

Spend 50% less time building Aceflow during January—but contract and delegate work to keep Aceflow moving forward
Learn, build, and explore—based on my curiosity and nothing more:
- Understand the loneliness crisis (how and why did the World Health Organization declare loneliness a 'global public health concern'?)
- I’ve had an Alexa for years, but I wish it could do more than it can. Can I code my own Alexa skills for it? (Spoiler alert: yes, I can, and it’s dope.)
Figure out how to live in SF for a week (I’ll be there from March 30 to April 4, let’s meet up if you’re around!)

The goal here was to explore new paths instead of only focussing on one, to see if something clicks. And also to gain new skills to become a unicorn person, before trying to build a unicorn company.

Did I realize I should stop building a startup and start building something else?

Let’s find out.

Reducing loneliness by developing a custom Alexa skill with the Alexa Device SDK 👨‍💻

I have an Alexa in my room.

Such a beautiful piece of technology. But I barely use it. It doesn’t add much value to my life.

One day, I looked at it and thought, “why am I wasting this? It has so much potential!”

So I decided to code my own Alexa skill.

In December, I researched into how AI companions could fight the loneliness senior Canadians face.

In January, I built a custom Alexa skill based on my hypothesis for a way to reduce loneliness.

To come up with the idea, I asked myself this question:
What’s 1 reason I wouldn’t call my parents often when I grow up?

My answer: I wouldn’t know what to talk about.

I also asked myself this question:
What’s 1 reason I don’t talk to my parents more than I could right now?

My answer: I don’t know what to talk about.

Sometimes, we just don’t know what to talk about. Let’s make having something to talk about easier.

This Alexa skill gives you random conversation starters. Since Alexa lets you call people on it, after you get your prompt, you can dial up the person you want to call on the same Alexa device, for a frictionless experience.

Watch my demo of the Alexa skill here:

Watch the demo!

How I turned my high school into my testing lab for Aceflow 🔬

This is my friend and classmate, Fahad.

One day, he told me he just remembered he had a science test and barely studied.

So I brought my laptop to him, opened up Aceflow, and let him go wild with studying during class.

My biggest unfair advantage in building Aceflow is that I’m building a tool for students, while I’m a student, surrounded by students 5 days a week at school.

My early adopters and beta testers are right here!

Whenever I’m at school now, I’m learning from users to iterate quick. It’s like my high school is my testing lab.

When you’re building a startup, you need to move fast to succeed. Closing the iteration loop as quickly as possible is key. Be intentional, because loops can run on forever if you let them run on forever.

What I’m learning from helping build the Stanford ASES Summit 🎪

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel spoke here in the past.

30 top collegiate entrepreneurs from around the globe are chosen for this 1-week immersive conference at Stanford University.

When I saw the website, I knew it would immensely disrupt my life trajectory for the better. But this summit is for university/college students, and I’m still in high school.

But why would I let that get in the way?

Acceptance email for the Stanford ASES Summit 2024!

I hustled my way in and am the only Summit delegate still in high school.

A lot of things can be your blocker, but don’t let yourself be your own blocker. Thanks

Navid Nathoo

for your note on this. Feels beautiful to internalize.

But that’s not all.

This Summit has the potential to do a lot of good in the world; it can reinvent entire futures of the delegates. With incredible speakers and mentors at the Summit, I wanted to contribute to make this Summit as valuable as possible.

Long story short, they invited me to the team, and I’m the only non-Stanford student helping them out!

The world runs on people, not rules. Rules aren’t always set in stone. Think different.

Working with groundbreaking entrepreneurs to provide mentorship at the Summit, and VC firms as sponsors to make this the best it can be. More on this in next month’s issue.

What else happened this month? 🤔

Helping grow Z Fellows through content strategy. Getting to listen in on private mentorship calls with people who’ve sold $1B companies, like the co-founder of Eventbrite and Xoom, the co-founder of Loom, etc.
Started a daily meditation habit before working each morning, thanks to
Aatik Chopra
! Productivity has skyrocketed, and I feel more daring to keep taking on new challenges.

What’s happening next month? 👀

There’s so much potential in hardware x LLMs, but there aren’t many useful products in this space. Raising $1k - $3k to run a 24-hour hack day at my house with TKS students and alumni to build a project together that answers this prompt: how can we build a hardware x LLM product that does the most good? By the end of the 24 hours, we’ll have a useful project, and videotaping of the 24 hours to produce a killer documentary about building something great with TKS. Thank you so much to
michael raspuzzi
for your help!
Build a solo hardware project—a physical AI companion. No fine details yet, just want to experiment! Hardware parts arrived!
Scaling Aceflow out of beta, and giving it to the public. It’s time to accelerate. Hyped for weekly startup mentorship calls with
Pranav Menon
—super grateful for your mentorship. And always grateful to my directors at TKS Activate—Max and Mikaela—for everything you do and the dreams you’re helping me build.
Develop and launch the productivity tool of my dreams. There are a lot of Chrome extensions for productivity, but I don’t think any of them are truly impeccable. Lots of space to disrupt. Already did customer discovery this month—hyped to turn my hypothesis from a napkin idea to a reality.
Design and pitch a product idea to Apple. More on this next month, but in short: AI voice cloning is getting better and better, leading to more and more scams. Apple’s uniquely positioned to bring an end to this.

There’s still one question left to be answered.

What was the result of the experiment of trying to explore more instead of confining myself to Aceflow?

I built new skills
I’m even more excited to build Aceflow

Distance breeds fondness, sometimes.

And that’s exactly what happened this time.

I’m obsessed with paving the future of education with AI, and working less on Aceflow last month further proved that to me.

But I’m thankful for my decision to explore.

I built new skills and uncovered new perspectives to become more of a unicorn person through exploring more by developing a custom Alexa skill, working with the Stanford ASES Summit and Z Fellows, etc.

But now that I know that my heart truly lies with Aceflow, it begs another question, because I’m still in high school:

“Should I go all-in?”

Let’s just say next month’s issue will be a rollercoaster.

Thanks for reading! I appreciate you sticking with me on my journey. Feel free to forward this email or share this issue with anyone you think would find me or this issue interesting. You can reach out to me on Twitter @KrishivThakuria!