I'm starting an artificial intelligence company called Rage and its mission is to help every person on the planet cultivate chosen family. To do this, I'm building the world's most emotionally intelligent A.I. that can plan any in-person gathering with the people closest to you in a single click.

How does it work? You can give Rage a short description of the event you want to organize, like: “Day trip to Jacob Riis beach on July 4th weekend” and your A.I. companion will make an event page you can share with your friends before it takes care of all of the planning. It will coordinate schedules to suggest times to meet that work for everyone, send reminders as the day approaches, and it can even help you book a car so you can pick up groceries for a picnic on the list that it helped develop for you - all with a single click. Just describe the gathering you want in a few words, and you can be confident that you'll get to spend time face-to-face, screens down, with the people you care the most about. That's the promise of Rage.

But why am I doing this? Why is this a worthy cause?

I believe every person on the planet - and I mean everyone - has a birthright to feel a profound sense of love and belonging with other people. I believe we are hardwired for human connection and it is an irreducible need, and we all deserve to be seen as our most powerful and vulnerable selves with others who have earned the right to see our light. When we lack meaningful human connection, I think we find that such pain is so unbearable that we often end up taking it out on others and we spread that pain: we give in to addiction, to judgment, to scarcity, to perfectionism, and to self-righteousness. Our loneliness curdles into hurt we feel in ourselves and inflict on others. I'd go so far as to say that much of the suffering we see in the world can be traced back to some sort of longing, some lack of human connection, and I believe solving loneliness is a problem as important as solving the problems of poverty, hunger, hate, or war.

But right now, we are not set up to succeed. The world as it is today is designed to make us feel like we are never enough: not successful enough, not beautiful enough, not important enough - not something enough to feel like we are worthy of love and belonging and we forget our birthright. Technology has a big role to play as to how we got here. Our screens have made us miserable. When we wake up, we're often expected to sit in front of a screen to scrape by and make a living, and sometimes after hours of being jacked in, we turn off that screen only to see our own dark reflection and realize that we haven't stepped outside for more than a few minutes to share a smile, or a laugh, or a chat with somebody…with anybody. We're exhausted and we're hurting and we end up numbing ourselves with even more screens. We scroll past photos of models and celebrities that remind us that we are neither beautiful enough nor important enough. We scroll past stories of war, of tragedy, and of division that make us angry and scared and remind us that we are not doing enough. We even scroll past posts of our friends, acquaintances, and colleagues and can't help but compare ourselves with the highlight reels of others. We scroll and we scroll and we scroll, searching for relief from the agony of this always-online half-life, and we're just too burnt out and too convinced of our own lack to muster the courage to make that phone call to a friend, to send that text for a coffee tomorrow morning, or to admit to someone that we are hurting to have them tell us “me too”, or to offer us the comfort of a warm hug, or just to be with us, alongside us, feeling with us. Technology promised to connect us. Technology has failed on that promise.

It's time for a change. I want to give every person on the planet the power to connect with the people they care most about in a single click. I want to make technology that gets us off of our screens and face-to-face with those closest to you. I want everyone to remember they are worthy of love and belonging and connection, as they are, right now. I want everyone to feel like they have chosen family. But I have one last story to tell and one last question to answer that I get asked about a lot:

Why is my company called Rage?

When I was fourteen years old, I came out of the closet to my high school English class on the last day of school. A week before that day, my teacher had told the class that we could do a talk about anything related to the book we were reading at the time for some extra credit. It was Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. I remember reading this one line from Atticus Finch, one of the central characters in the book:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

I decided I was going to give a talk about that line, and what it was like hearing my classmates throw around words like “faggot” and “gay” as slurs without knowing what it meant to someone like me. I was terrified. I was angry. But I knew coming out was the right thing to do. So right before it was my turn to get up in front of the classroom, I remember stepping outside to catch my breath, to steady my nerves, and a few minutes later I walked back in and gave my talk. People were shocked, people were uncomfortable, but ultimately people understood what I was saying and I walked out of that classroom ready to start a new chapter of my life. I knew my life would be more difficult from then on. I knew that some people may never accept me for who I was. But I wanted to be brave and I was committed to living my life out of the shadows in a way that wouldn't let me turn back.

For years after that, things actually were hard, and I remember feeling more isolated than I'd ever felt in my life up to that point. I grew up in a largely Asian immigrant community that valued family, tradition, and competitive achievement. Queerness was a taboo subject, and there was no one I felt I could to turn to for companionship, for understanding, or for connection. I was losing grip on my worthiness and I started to feel a swell of regret growing inside of me for what I did that day in my English class. Then, the day I turned eighteen years old, I drove an hour from my home across Los Angeles to go to West Hollywood because I'd heard there was a party that was made for other gay Asian people like me. I remember being so nervous and so excited, and I remember handing my driver's license to the bouncer who wished me happy birthday as he waved me in towards the doors. It was the first time I ever felt like I could finally connect face-to-face with people who understood me for all of who I am. It was the first time I started to understand what it meant to cultivate chosen family, the first time I understood what it meant to hold space, to gather people at the same at the same place to forge human connection.

That party was hosted at a club called Rage.

Now, twenty years later after I stepped out of that classroom, I'm coming out again, but this time, it's to share with the world what I believe is my life's work, my calling, and to send out a beacon for others to join me in making the world more like the one we were originally promised with technology. We are at a turning point in human history with the arrival of artificial intelligence, and we have a second chance at harnessing an awe-inspiring power to finally make good on that promise we believed in so many years ago. This is a clarion call. I am tired of feeling like I am small and being scared to show others who I am. I am angry that the wonders of technology are used to divide us and designed to make us feel like we are not enough. I know that what I am trying to do is incredibly hard. I know that many people may never understand me or support me or may even actively fight me in what I am doing. I know that I will make mistakes, and that I may let others down on this journey, and I know I may ultimately fail at this cause. But right now, in this moment, I know that I must try. If what I am saying resonates with you, if you feel in some way the way that I feel, if you still believe somewhere in your heart that we deserve a better, more connected world and you still believe the magic of technology can play some role in restoring our birthright for human connection, I want to you come join me. I need you with me.

Let's Rage. Together.