This is the first real post on this site, and I wanted it to be about the thing that still feels like the start of everything: winning the Business Innovation track at the TiE U Global Hackathon with my teammate Luka Neal.
We were S.L.A.P. — Student Local Adaptation Program. I was at Houston Community College, Luka was at the University of Houston, and we built a way to connect students who already had digital skills with local small businesses that needed help. Mentorship, not just a pitch deck. The track was sponsored by Verizon’s Small Business Ready team, and the challenge was to accelerate digital skills for small business growth. That’s exactly what we were trying to do.
TiE Houston announced it on November 5, 2024. Over 1,250 students from 20 countries were in the mix. Four Houston teams even submitted. We took the top prize in our track, and they wrote us up as a UH × HCC collab, which still makes me proud. Two campuses, one team.
Almost two years later I’m still carrying that night with me. It was the first time I watched an idea we sketched under pressure actually land with judges who build companies for a living. It made entrepreneurship feel real instead of abstract, and it made me want to keep shipping things that help people.
So this is the anniversary post. Not because the trophy is the whole story, but because that win is the first time I believed I could do this for real. More updates from here.