We are a bunch of dreamers, dreaming aloud that we can build a personal assistant that goes way beyond Siri And Alexa. That we can build a personal assistant indistinguishable from a second brain can mimic the functions and mechanics of our highly evolved biological brain, and overcomes its limitations. We dreamers have product designers based in California while the researchers and engineers are based across the globe.

My name is Rajesh or Raj for friends, and I am the sole founder. I was born in the impoverished Thar desert in Pakistan. My father, who had moved to the city of Karachi in search of a better life, was a constant source of inspiration to me. I distinctly remember him telling me that they year I was born, he had bought used shoes at an auction for himself. He then worked tirelessly to not only provide for the family but become a successful businessman and community leader.

Growing up, I followed in his footsteps, striving to be the best in everything I did. I was fortunate enough to win multiple scholarships for college. And when I decided to to pursue my graduate studies in computer science, I secured a scholarship to study in the United States at the University of Illinois.

After grad school, I started my first company called Zero Percent while still on my student visa, working tirelessly to make it a success. It was a difficult journey, filled with struggles and rejections. I was able to raise funding and win multiple awards. But despite all of my efforts, however, I was unable to make the economics work, and my company eventually failed.

But failure is just another step on the road to success, and I was not one to give up easily. I joined another founder's company in my area of passion, food-tech, and was able to help it grow by 500% in just a little over two years. I am proud of what I was able to accomplish and grateful for the lessons I learned along the way. This gave me the confidence to start AskWhai with the mission to democratize AI for small businesses. After months of market and user research, we build a no-code tool for Shopify retailers to personalize their store content and recommendations for their customers. It took off like wild fire during the pandemic, with zero sales and marketing.

After operating the tool for 3+ years and profitably, we sold it to an e-commerce tool aggregator in October 2022. Read more about the acquisition. I am super grateful to our team and customers for this milestone. Post-acquisition, I am working with the same team of engineers (very lucky!) along with two very talented product designers to launch moon. Again, our mission is to democratize AI and make it super accessible for not just people like me, but also for my 6-yr old son and 66-yr old father. Instead of endless devices, app, menus, buttons and options, could we simplify technology down to something that feels like a friend who knows you the best and can hang with you whenever you want. That’s our vision for moon, a copilot for your life.

I will continue to strive for excellence in everything I do, using the lessons I learned and the impact I made to inspire others and create a better future for myself and those around me. Friends describe me as nice, creative, reliably adventurous, but also sensitive and sometimes checked out when I think deep about AI and future of humanity. For your reference, here is my LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook profiles. Thank you for reading about us.