My sister had already cornered the lemonade stand market so my first entrepreneurial enterprise was hauling rocks from the quarry to break open and sell the crystals to compete with her. I then took the profits from those summers to buy and flip energy drinks to sell to the “wealthy” students at school. I graduated high-school early at 16 to work my way through college where I quickly realized how difficult it is to manage a business 12 hours a day and attend college, so I joined the Army shortly after I turned 17 to finish my education. Graduating the top of my class in school, I became a missile defense engineer and assistant tactical director; operating, managing, and directing defense systems and weapons modernization. I felt truly blessed to be honored by Congressmen, the President, and non-profits for my work those years- honorably leaving the service in 2012. I also started my first company and worked on a few patents during this time . After leaving the service, I became a lobbyist for college/professional training programs for disabled veterans as well as was appointed to serve in a number of city government and relations roles to include: Austin City Redistricting Commissioner, Director of the University of Texas City Relations Agency, member of the Board of Directors for University Area Business Partners, and a member of the Mayor's Task Force- I also working several election campaigns from ‘12-‘16. When a tragic murder occurred on the UT Campus, I developed the concept and built the team that would become Campus Watch, a safety app for colleges and universities that uses technology to drastically reduce the response time by campus and city police departments- think Uber but for emergency services. After exiting, I started Newchip out of a passion for entrepreneurship (having built several companies myself and advising companies for over a decade) and to date we’ve helped about 500+ entrepreneurs raise over $100M since 2016.