On continuing to be here, and doing the hard work.

And raising $2.5M for my startup.

I’m excited to announce Kit’s fundraise today. I decided to start working on Kit because I’ve always lived for creativity, learning, and new experiences. One of the great promises of technology is its ability to facilitate exchange with other people. Together with my amazing team, we built Kit with this in mind; our goal is to create the next big platform for learning and enabling new experiences through the products people discover from others.

I grew up in the Haight-Ashbury to radical Buddhist-artist-technologist parents; they always impressed upon me that I could do or be anything by keeping an open mind and heart and always exploring the world around me. Unable to afford a Mac, I often helped my Dad build PCs for the music studio in our home where he frequently worked on demos for local Bay Area singers and rappers. I went on to graduate from Stanford where I studied Product Design, Japanese, and Science, Technology, and Society with a BS and MS before continuing to work as a Product Manager at Apple, YouTube, Google London, and Hailo.

Throughout my life I’ve been fortunate to connect with many different people and have a wide range of experiences; I’ve gotten to where I am precisely because of them. In that same vein, Kit is a community that connects people, helping each other learn and easily discover the products they need for the activities that expand and enrich their lives.

This fundraise is the culmination of a ton of hard work. Not just the past year of working on Kit, but really a lifetime of work, and the lifetimes of generations that got us all where we are today. Not many people make it this far; even fewer who look like me or come from where I come from. I fully recognize that this moment in time also marks the start of even more hard work.

Those who don’t believe people like me are even capable of succeeding may seemingly have the upper hand at the moment, but history shows us that by continuing to be here, and continuing to do the work, change and ultimately justice will prevail.

We’re still here, we’re not going away, and we’ll continue to do the hard work.