Tokyo, Japan
I'm 18. I run an 18-year-old family business and I build and ship software — and I'm heading to Cambridge this autumn for HSPS at Peterhouse, over offers from UC Berkeley, NUS, UCLA, UCSD, HKU, HKUST, Edinburgh, King's, and UCL. I'm Director of Operations at Premier Trophy / Crystal Century (crystalcentury.com), my family's Hong Kong custom-awards manufacturer — running since 2008, vertically integrated from our own factory in China to finishing in Hong Kong, with thousands of business customers, 3,000+ live products, and a 5.0 Google rating across 220+ reviews. I keep order-to-fulfilment and the e-commerce store running, and I turned 17 years of invoices into a proprietary sales dataset and an internal AI CRM. Alongside it I build and ship. I'd rather show a live URL than a deck: • ElevateOS (elevateos.org) — tutoring-operations software for agencies in Asia. A tutor logs a 60-second note; it becomes a parent-ready report and clear next steps. Working product, first pilots June 2026 (EDUBAL). • Tatemori (盾守, tatemori.com) — compliance tooling for Japan's customer-harassment law, an employer obligation from October 2026: one-tap incident capture and an audit-ready record. Live demo, signing first design partners. • Prior Moves (priormoves.com) — turns top investors' 13F filings into a daily-updated board of predicted buys across five markets, with a weekly email digest, tracked on a live account. Research and education only. • nobill (nobill.app) — open-source, local-first subscription tracker that reads your own receipts, flags promo hikes, and links to each cancel page. Your data never leaves your device. • Katalyst & Pulse (kvcn.org) — the coordination and convention tooling behind Kiwanis Voices Club of Nippon, built to keep youth-service organizations running across leadership handoffs. Pulse ships at the Kiwanis Manila Convention 2026. The thread through all of it: people have ambition, money, and good advice, but no system that turns those into consistent action. I build the system. Everything in one place: howardchan.me. Tokyo and Hong Kong — open to builders in education, AI, and systems infrastructure
Founder University is the JETRO/METI-backed founder program run with Jason Calacanis's LAUNCH ecosystem in Tokyo. I'm building ElevateOS through its weekly build-and-ship cycles, with direct access to operators and investors across the Japan and US startup networks.
PriorMoves predicts what the world's best investors will buy next, roughly six weeks before their SEC 13F filing makes it public, across five markets (US, Japan, UK, EU, Korea). Honest research, not a returns promise. Built the full stack: ~58 per-investor walk-forward models predicting new positions at out-of-sample AUC 0.65 to 0.96 (Japan ~0.84), a five-market disclosure pipeline, and a live site with a cryptographically timestamped prediction record. In Japan the 5-business-day 大量保有 rule lets a prediction be publicly confirmed within a week. We publish the caveats, including a backtested edge whose confidence interval still includes zero. The honesty is the product.
ElevateOS is the system of record for tutoring and admissions agencies. Every session compounds into a proprietary student-learning profile that predicts retention and sharpens matching, so the data deepens and switching gets harder the longer they stay.
I run operations for Premier Trophy / Crystal Century (crystalcentury.com), a vertically-integrated Hong Kong custom-awards manufacturer operating since 2008 — trophies, medals, crystal, plaques, and corporate gifts, made in our own factory and finished in Hong Kong. We serve thousands of business customers across Asia with a 5.0 Google rating over 220+ reviews and 3000+ products, working with clients including Clé de Peau, the Standard Chartered Marathon, Miss Asia, and TamJai. I own the order-to-fulfilment systems and our e-commerce store, and I'm modernising how a 18-year-old business finds and serves customers.
• Founded ElevateOS, a vertically integrated execution system for high-performance students. • Engaged with global mentors and founders to refine product and capital strategies. • Advanced through structured milestones in validation, user acquisition, and investor readiness. • Participated in the Hong Kong Startup Ideation Bootcamp to enhance entrepreneurial skills.