i am math. yes, like the subject.
i was born to immigrant parents who bet everything on america. i grew up inside restaurants, working at my family-owned smb restaurants across the philippines, the us, and dubai. i waited tables for three years watching them work twelve-hour shifts for margins they could barely hold onto.
at 15, my sophomore year of high school, both of my parents became disabled within months of each other. i became the caregiver, the cook, the translator, and the kid still trying to graduate high school. i ended up with a 2.7 gpa because i was making dinner every night and driving my mom to physical therapy every morning, skipping classes to get by. the kids from my high school were going to stanford and harvard. i was going to community college, because it was the only thing i could get into and afford at the time.
now i am 22, at berkeley haas, and building orderly, the ai ordering layer for every restaurant on earth. the same restaurants i grew up in. the same owner-operators my parents were.
i am not trying to build a company. i am trying to build the thing that would have let my parents and cousins stop working at 60 instead of 70. the thing that would have given my cousins access to credit when the banks turned them away. the thing that makes restaurant ownership a viable path for the next generation of immigrant kids who want to build something of their own.
someone is going to own the ordering layer for the restaurant industry.
it will be me.