My parents used to own a candy store in a mall in Prescott, Arizona. It was the kind of place where kids pressed their faces against the glass and pointed at gummy worms. My earliest memories are of helping restock shelves and watching my parents count the register at closing time. Then one day, they sold everything. The store, our house, most of our belongings. We drove west until we hit Cupertino.
The Bet
My parents are not engineers. They didn't go to college. They grew up in India watching Silicon Valley change the world from a distance, and somewhere along the way they decided that proximity matters — that being near the people building the future would give their kids opportunities that a mall in Arizona never could. So they made a bet with everything they had. We moved into a small apartment. They took jobs beneath their education. My dad worked nights so he could drive us to school in the morning.
An Unexpected Network
Here's the strange thing about a candy store: it attracts everyone. Including, sometimes, brilliant young people who would become founders, engineers, builders. A few of the kids who wandered in and pressed their faces against the glass grew up to do extraordinary things. I was young, helping behind the counter, but I was paying attention. Those casual exchanges — kids with big ideas, talking to each other, talking to me — became some of my earliest education in what ambition actually looks like in a person. My parents had no tech network to hand me. But their store, without anyone intending it, gave me a window into one.
Growing Up Without a Peer Group for It
Here's the part no one tells you about growing up ambitious in a place that isn't set up for it: most of your friends aren't chasing the same things. I didn't have peers who stayed up thinking about robotics or AI architectures. I didn't have a friend group that pushed me technically. For a long time, I thought that meant something was wrong with me — that I was too serious, or too weird, or just alone in what I cared about. Eventually I understood: you find your people in labs, in research programs, in online communities. You build the peer group later. But first, you have to persist without one.
Growing Up in the Shadow of Giants
Cupertino is a strange place to be a kid. Apple's campus is a few miles away. Google, Meta, and a hundred startups are within driving distance. You grow up knowing that the phone in your pocket was designed by people who eat at the same restaurants you do. That proximity does something to you. It makes the impossible seem possible. If someone in this town built the iPhone, maybe someone in this town — maybe someone like me — could build what comes next.
What I Learned From the Candy Store
Small things can bring people joy. A well-stocked shelf of gummy worms made kids smile. That matters. But some things scale. A robot that heals wounds faster could help millions of people. An AI system that truly understands human minds could transform how we communicate. My parents gave up their candy store so I could work on things that scale. Every late night in the lab, every line of code, every failed prototype — it's all built on the foundation of their sacrifice. The least I can do is build something that matters.