TKS alumni have raised over $80M... nuts.

15 stories of TKS alumni founders and the companies they're building.

TKS alumni have raised just over $80,000,000 for companies they’ve started or were a founding/early employee at.

The impressive part is that the oldest TKS alum is only 23 years old.

There are currently ~28 venture-backed startups founded by TKS alumni - all within the past few years. So we’re doing the sensible thing - this month we’re launching a TKS Investor Program to help our alumni raise capital (if you’re an investor and want to learn more, shoot me an email).

We don’t have a public page that displays all the progress of alumni, but I’m working on it. In the meantime, I’ll highlight 15 TKS alumni working on interesting startups in this post.

Quick Note: I want to clarify that TKS promotes multiple pathways, including building a startup, joining a disruptive/impactful company, and doing important scientific or technological research. We help our students reach their goals, rather than push them in a specific direction. I’ll also share stories from other areas.

15 TKS alumni working on interesting startups.

Ben Nashman

Founder, Synex Medical

Investors include: Accomplice, Radical Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, Naval Ravikant, Sam Altman, Max Hodak, Balaji Srinivasan, Babak Nivi, Jake Zeller, Jonathon Swanson, John Capodilupo, David Dacus, Rob Stevens, Colin Harris, N49P, Panda Angel Partners, Hedgewood Inc., 186 Ventures, The SAVEarth Fund, LP, Schox Venture Capital, Alok Tayi.

During TKS, Ben researched magnetic resonance and how the technology could be applied to build better MRIs, especially since that industry hasn’t innovated much in decades. The idea turned into developing a non-invasive wearable to accurately measure critical blood metabolites like glucose, lactate and ketones. I repeat, NON-INVASIVE. No blood. No finger pricking. This is massive. Ben was the first alumni to raise significant capital and work full-time on a startup. He’s inspired many other young people to pursue their ambitions and work on difficult things. Watch this talk he gave at TKS in 2018: Developing non-invasive blood testing.

Alexander Wu

Co-Founder, Utopia Labs

Investors include: Paradigm Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Circle Ventures, Gusto, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Distributed Global, Fourth Revolution Capital.

When Alexander was in TKS he explored areas like gene editing and AI. One of this first presentations 5 years ago was actually on using gene editing to treat age-related hearing loss - watch young Alexander here (sorry! haha). We had multiple discussions on what it meant to be on an “unconventional path”, which I guess was foreshadowing the path he would choose years later. Now he’s building Utopia Labs, which is foundational infrastructure for DAOs (Web3/blockchain stuff). They’ve raised a $23M Series A last year and are heads down building the company in San Francisco.

Jay Parthasarthy

Early Employee, Tecton

Investors include: Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Tiger Global, Databricks, and Snowflake.

I think Jay might be one of the oldest TKS alumni. He started in the first TKS Toronto cohort back in 2016. I still remember his application where he wrote about arbitrage when betting on League of Legends games; he was unconventional from day 1. His early interest was in energy, and I think that’s now circled back years later. Here’s an old video of him talking about Solar Energy (if you can’t tell by now, I get joy from embarrassing them). During the next 2 years in TKS, he went on to apply artificial intelligence and CNNs in agriculture; started Correly, which was acquired; and joined Tecton as an early employee, which has raised over $100M. He’s currently in the process of starting/joining an exciting company that will, hopefully, change the trajectory of the world.

Adam Majmudar

Founding Engineer, Thirdweb

Investors include: Haun Ventures, Coinbase, and Shopify.

When we launched TKS New York, my close friend Mike Schmidt took on the role as City Director, while simultaneously building a company. Adam and Mike clicked, and I think Mike was a huge influence for Adam. After TKS, Adam joined Mike to work at his company, Dovetale (while Adam was still in high school). For his next real work experience, Adam went on to join Thirdweb with Furqan Rydhan, who’s be a friend and huge supporter of TKS alumni. Not long after, Dovetale was acquired by Shopify and Thirdweb raised $24M at a $160M valuation. I think Adam’s ambition attracts smart people, who then act as awesome mentors for him to reach his true potential. He was recently on a podcast talking about Thirdweb and Web3: watch here.

Michael Larson

Founder, RIPTK

Investors include: [fundraising in progress]

The idea for RIPTK originated from the TKS Moonshot projects, which is where students are pushed to think about moonshot technologies that address big problems. RIPTK is developing innovations in wireless energy that can be leveraged across industries including telecom, IoT, robotics, and medical devices. I can’t say too much since a lot of what he’s working on is confidential. One of his biggest supporters is his TKS Ottawa Director, Ian Lockhart, who’s also an early investor in RIPTK and continues to be a close mentor. Michael’s been dedicated to his vision for years, and that’s what excites me the most about RIPTK and him as a founder. He’s been through a lot of roadblocks and seems to overcome them every time.

Neil Mitra

Founder, Mitra Biotechnologies

Investors include: [fundraising in progress]

I was on the phone with Neil this morning discussing his capital needs and priorities as a young founder. What he’s working on matters. His technology saves lives and addresses the leading cause of death - cardiovascular disease. He’s 18 years old, so convincing investors to give him money for a MedTech company can be a challenge, but he’s made up for his age by working with scientific leaders in the industry and partnering with the University of Waterloo and University of British Columbia. They have developed an effective way to detect multiple biomarkers and diagnose patients for things like heart attacks before they happen. They’ve filled patents and are testing in labs. He just started first year university. He’s growing fast and becoming a strong founder that will make a dent in the MedTech industry.

Samarth Athreya

Co-Founder, Axiome

Investors include: 1517 Fund, Caffeinated Capital, Angel Investors

I’ve worked with a lot of young ambitious people over the past 6 years, Samarth being one of them. He taught me something important - the potential of young people is far greater than we think. When Samarth was in TKS he worked on nanotech and gene sequencing. He constantly pushed the boundaries of what most would think he was capable of. That mindset has grown stronger over the years and now he’s working on an extremely difficult and important biotechnology. He’s developing high-resolution sensors that allow us to examine biology at resolutions previously impossible with the goal of accelerating drug discovery and the development of novel diagnostics. The next big breakthroughs in healthcare could be a direct result of this technology if he’s successful.

Aryan Sharma

Co-Founder, Execute

Investors include: [he asked not to share, but includes very big names!]

It was clear when I first met Aryan that he was a builder. He wanted to create products that people use and build a successful company. He’s based in India so he joined our TKS Virtual program during COVID. I’ve watched him iterate through multiple projects and land on the vision for Execute, which is like Zapier for blockchain. He’s working with some of the best venture capitalists in the world and I’m confident that Execute will be the first of many successful companies he builds.

Nina Khera, Anupra Chandran, and Akshaj Darbar

Co-Founders, Biotein

Investors include: 1517 Fund, Ichor Therapeutics (collab)

Nina, Anupra, and Akshaj all had a passion for using science as a tool to improve health-span, so I’m not surprised that they’re now working on a human longevity company. They are developing a test for personalized health measurement at the molecular level by using a system similar to a cheek swab. Through a saliva-based test, they aim to measure key protein markers that will inform individuals of their risk of various diseases, and provide personalized recommendations. Ultimately it’s about making health monitoring better. Right now we don’t have much visibility, other than my Apple Watch I’m pretty much blind.

Sigil Wen

Founder, Monument and Serendipity

Investors include: Naval Ravikant, Justin Kan, Elad Gil, IDEO, and Founders, Inc.

It was inevitable that Sigil would build a company. He has so much energy and drive that I don’t think traditional education systems would be enough for him. During TKS he built tons of projects, specifically using artificial intelligence. For his first project he worked with Michael Ye, another TKS student, and built DeepDev - a no-code machine learning platform to enable anyone to power their applications with AI. Here’s the (now cringe) video that him and Michael created about DeepDev: watch here (or don’t I’m sure Sigil and Michael would thank you for skipping it 😛).

Michael Ye

Founder, GoodCash

Investors include: Alexis Ohanian (Co-Founder of Reddit), 776 Fund, Ali Partovi, Serena Ventures, and AlleyCorp.

Michael and Sigil started their journey in TKS with DeepDev (see above). The next big project Michael built was 1academy - and EdTech company. I can’t count how many conversations I’ve had with Michael about building a startup. From day one he’s wanted to be a founder and blitzscale a business. A trait I’d use to describe Michael is relentless. He will keep going no matter what. He’s also heavily prioritized personal growth and self-awareness. I’ve watched him grow a lot over the past few years. I’ve traveled with him to places like Barcelona to attend Mobile World Congress… so I got to know him pretty well. I’m looking forward to how GoodCash evolves. Last year he made a great video on his journey in entrepreneurship, watch it here.

Valkyrie Holmes and Jesse Pound

Co-Founders, Ember Bazaar

Investors include: Alexis Ohanian (Co-Founder of Reddit), 776 Fund

It’s cool to see real companies evolve from projects during TKS - this is one of them. Valkyrie and Jesse are both TKS alum and decided to build a solution to restore forests. Their approach is to do this by connecting landowners to land tenders with the skills and knowledge to restore forests to their natural state. Ultimately, this is a macro climate play that can help our environment, while leveraging economic incentives within the forestry industry.

There’s more TKS alum founders that I haven’t highlighted here, and honestly it’s just because this post took me a while to write and I can’t spend more time on it. But I will build a page on our website and highlight them on our instagram (@tksworldhq). I’m excited to roll out the new TKS Investor Program and support our alumni as they raise capital and build companies. I predict we’ll see an exponential growth of startups coming out of TKS in the coming years - remember, the oldest alum is only 23 years old. Over the next few years TKS alum will graduate from university, work at great companies, and leave to build their own or join early stage companies tackling hard problems. It’s very exciting to think about. These young teenagers are growing up and starting to make moves, and I love having a front row seat.

Btw, we just launched a new website last week. If you made it this far, shoot me your thoughts on it. I’m curious to know what people think about it!

And investors - send me a note if you want info about our TKS Investor Program.

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