A home of my own

For a long time, my presence on the internet lived on other companies' platforms. A profile on LinkedIn, photos on Instagram, a few posts on Medium. Each one told a slice of the story, shaped by someone else's format.

I've wanted a real home on the internet for years. What changed is that AI has made it possible for me to build one myself, exactly the way I want it, and to keep changing it as I grow. This site is that home.

It's for anyone who already knows me, and for anyone I meet in the future who wants to know me a little better. Welcome.

The thread

My path looks scattered on paper: neuroscience at Dartmouth, a master's in physiology at Georgetown, one of the first 15 employees at Casper, then co-running a family business, Wonton In A Million, with my wife, Cynthia. Then teaching myself to build software.

The thread is simpler than it looks. I've always wanted to help people.

I started out on the medical path because it seemed like the most direct way to do that: understand how the body works, then treat people. During a gap year after college, I went to work at a small startup, and it opened my eyes to the impact that one person can have on a small team. That empowerment helped me realize that medicine isn't the only way to help people. A company, or a product, can reach far more of them.

I still joke that when I retire, I might go back to medical school. I never lost my fascination with how the body works and how to help people get healthier. In fact, I didn't go to medical school, but most of what I build ends up being about health anyway: a fitness app that keeps my friends accountable, a food journal, an app that gets my treadmill runs into Apple Health accurately.

Why I build

I've always been a builder. I went to a software engineering bootcamp in 2019 because I had product ideas and wanted to make them real myself. Over the last few years I've realized something about myself: what I love isn't the engineering. It's the building, meaning taking an idea from "what if" to something people actually use.

AI has made that distinction matter. Writing code is getting cheap. Deciding what's worth building is now the harder and more valuable skill.

I think of building as a funnel. Start with lots of ideas. Get each one to a testable version as quickly as possible. Then put it in front of real people early, which is always a little scary, because their feedback tells you whether the idea deserves more of your time and what its core actually is. The sooner you get that feedback, the easier it is to stay on the right path.

Everything else

Work isn't the whole story, and this site doesn't pretend it is.

Family comes first for me. Cynthia and I have two boys, Logan and Maverick, and I think constantly about how to raise them to be happy, well-adjusted, good people. You'll see a lot of them here.

Fitness is how I stay healthy and physically capable, and running is a big part of that. I train better with a race on the calendar. A month ago I ran the Berlin Marathon, my third World Marathon Major after New York and Tokyo, and I'd like to finish them all.

And I take a lot of photos and videos, because I want to remember. Who we are comes from what we've lived through, and recording those experiences is a way to tell the story of how we became who we are.

What to expect

I'll publish a new entry every week, rotating through five themes:

• Building: what my products are teaching me, including behind-the-scenes looks at how I build with AI.
• Career: lessons from operating teams and from finding the work where I'm most useful.
• Family: stories and photos from the ordinary weeks I most want to remember.
• Fitness: training, race recaps, and health experiments.
• Photography: collections, films, and the occasional vacation recap.

This site is the newest thing going through my own funnel. It's launching before it's finished, and it will keep changing as I learn what's useful. If something here resonates, or doesn't, I'd love to hear about it.

One more thing

I'm looking for my next full-time role in AI product operations, AI enablement, or customer-facing and forward-deployed AI. I want a team where operating judgment and hands-on building are both part of the job. If that sounds like your team, or you know someone I should talk to, email me at reachout@valentinowong.com.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you're here.