Hi, I'm Kevin!
I'm 22 years old and currently study CS at MIT, with plans to graduate this Fall 2022. In January 2022, I was fortunate enough to raise $1.4 million for a crypto startup, which was both an exhausting and incredible experience. During that time, my cofounder and I, who both dropped out of MIT, were accepted into Y Combinator's S22 cohort and even hosted Lil Nas X's birthday party at the Hype House where we lived.
However, I decided that I didn't want to work with my cofounder anymore and retured to school. I am now exploring a wide range of areas for my next venture, including crypto, AI, space, social media, and edtech. Now, here are some cool facts about me!
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I was a Taekwondo athlete for 16 years (from five to 21). I was lucky enough to be on the USA National Team four times, leading the US teams that won gold at the 2017 and 2020 Pan-American International Taekwondo Championships and bronze at the 2019 Taekwondo World Cup. Although my TeamUSA page is a bit outdated, it is still cool! I love mentoring athletes, acting as a coach at the USA National Team Training Camp and US National Championships.
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I was a semi-professional poker player (if it counts haha!). I was an instructor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, teaching poker theory to 171 undergraduate, graduate, and MBA students in 2020 and 2021. I mainly play mid-stakes online sit-and-gos and tournaments, but I've also played at various casinos and underground games in NYC. I was the co-president of the MIT Poker Club for almost two years, where I helped organize events for 500+ club members with the $70k+ funding we receive every year from our quant sponsors. I cofounded the Collegiate Series of Poker to spread the love of poker to 450+ college students across 53 US colleges with $60k in funding before I left in late 2021.
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Before 2021, I hated reading! But after reading "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz, I realized I just hated the genre of all the assigned books in English and History classes for the first 21 years of my life. Miraculously, I now absolutely love reading! My favorite topics are about negotiation, biographies, and everything startup. The MIT classes, 11.011 The Art and Science of Negotiation and 11.111 Leadership in Negotiation: Advanced Applications, both taught by the astonishing Bruno Verdini, are by far my favorite classes at MIT.
If you'd like to reach out (please do!), feel free to email me at kev2018@mit.edu or follow me on Twitter @jiang_kev