San Francisco, California, United States
I taught myself to code at 12 and got completely hooked. I spent much of my teens cranking out iOS apps, and with a lot of obsession and some incredible luck, one I built in high school became the #1 homework planner in the world and got acquired while I was still in college. That drive to build at a bigger scale led me to Apple, where I was on the front lines of the top-secret teams that launched the Vision Pro and the early prototypes of Apple Intelligence – presenting multimodal AI agent demos to execs right below Tim Cook. But here's what changed everything. My senior year of college, I wrote my final paper on the technological singularity – right when GPT-3 had just dropped. That research rewired my brain. It helped me realize four things: that AGI is probably the most significant advancement in the history of the universe. That my technical skills weren't durable – AI would be better at coding than me within the decade, and what actually matters is EQ and relationships. That society isn't remotely ready, and we as technologists have a responsibility to be stewards of that transition. And that AI itself is both the threat and the tool we need to solve it. All of that pointed me in one direction: community. When ChatGPT launched, I started building again – this time a weekly meetup with friends we called The GenAI Collective. I also left Apple to co-found Cofactory with a couple of brilliant Stanford PhDs, a venture-backed AI startup (we were Mercor and Cognition's first customers – both now multibillion-dollar companies). But the Collective was where the real conversations were happening – not just about what to build, but about what all of this means. I chose the mission. Today, The AI Collective is 200,000+ members strong with 400+ volunteers running 150+ chapters across 50+ countries – a non-profit building the social infrastructure for AGI. After leading it for over three years, I've since shifted my focus to what's next: I'm now building collective intelligence infrastructure for AI agents – the technical counterpart to what AIC does for people. Outside of this, I'm a competitive natural bodybuilder (INBF/WNBF) and read 50-100 books a year (books.chappyasel.com). If you're building in this space, I'd love to meet you.
The world's largest AI community – building the human layer for the AI age. We are a global non-profit uniting 200,000+ leaders, builders, and stakeholders across 100+ forums worldwide to democratize the frontier, build trust, and coordinate how society navigates the rapid acceleration of technological progress.
Building a powerful global network of alumni to connect, collaborate, and give back to the TJ community as a board member of the TJHSST Partnership Fund.
Making early-stage investments on behalf of Madrona.
Working with Howard to shape strategy, product, and partnerships that make Roam the AI world’s go-to virtual HQ platform.
Tracks and analyzes workouts. Complete with AI-enabled intelligent feedback, advanced analysis, gamified leaderboards, social features, and much more! 100k+ installs, 5k+ MAU, 2M+ sessions, 4.7 star rated, top-10 weightlifting app