My (literal) grandfather story

Hey it’s Ashvin, and this is my about section.

I’m a 27 year old, born and raised in Sarawak, Malaysia. Currently based in Kuala Lumpur. I’m Malaysian, with Indian heritage. My grandparents came over to Sarawak from India (Kerala) and I’ve still got a ton of relatives there on both my parents sides.

My late grandad was stationed in Sarawak by the British millitary. He joined the millitary in India as a teenager, trained as a telegraph operator to communicate intel. Most of his career was working as a telegraph operator at near minimum wage. Everyone thought his kids would end up to be labourers in Sarawak. Somehow he prioritised education for all his children, and all 5 managed to complete university as engineers. It was a struggle, he mortgaged his house at one point to afford it, all the kids helped each other financially to finish their degrees.

One generation later, that emphasis on education resulted in all 5 sons becoming engineering leaders across various institutions. This was highly unprobable, but they started from the bottom, pushed through their careers, kept learning & became who they are today. My mom’s story was similar. She studied hard, coming from a small town in Kerala, got into university & became a doctor.

Since young, I became obsessed with this idea of education, knowledge, social mobility & progress. I grew up in public schools in Sarawak where the median income was just above the poverty line. Many of my really smart friends couldn’t afford university. The question I asked myself was what does it take, to totally transform a region and improve the livelihoods of people.

I knew education was an answer, but what was the deeper thing that’s underlying. From observing my best teachers, I realised it was largely instilling the joy in learning that results in the best long-term outcomes for people. Character, self-belief and other factors also made the biggest difference.

Then there are layers on top of that, economics, leadership, policies, exposure, movements.

In university I got exposed to the mechanics of startups, internet businesses, modern media companies like youtubers & creators, technology skills and the new opportunities that were coming from these segments. My goal was to understand these deeply enough that I could teach them.

So I decided to study two things intensely - tech & media. My goal became to get good at these skills, and teach everything I learn along the way so others can follow & gain from it too. I had to be a practitioner to teach, and I had to learn to be a really good practitioner to inspire.

That’s why on all my socials my oneliner is usually “building stuff & sharing what I learn along the way”. I want to create a massive public log of the ideas that shaped me while I’m building, what worked, what didn’t, and I want to keep all this available for free.

My choices on what problems I tackle in the world are governed by some of these principles too. Cleve exists because I’ve seen how AI only really works when it works alongside human thought. And this can create massive economic upside and leverage for users and communities that do.

My mental models

I would consider myself a fast learner. I learn through buliding and refining my understanding of the world regularly. My models of the world are generally grounded in physics, work first principles up through biology, then lastly the layer of man-made & human things like history, economics, politics and psychology-driven things that I understand least and am learning the most about. I’m very open to new ideas, but you’ll have to argue with me sufficiently to break my world view first. It’s very hard for me to believe something that doesn’t align with my existing view of the world, so I’d generally need to change parts first to accept new ideas. I struggle to memorize things, but once I understand things I remember them for a long time.

I’m pretty good at learning how to learn, and I think about it a lot. I care a lot about the fun factor, getting past the annoyance treshold of a new domain, asking the right questions to students, methods that help people think deeper and understand things, but also feel energised to learn. I think of learning new things as passing the escape velocity for a subject matter. It takes a while to get (someone) there, but once you do, people can fly fast and go far. The general goal of education systems is to accelerate as many people past their own escape velocity as fast as possible towards their goals.

I’m pretty motivated to teach

In order to teach my friends in study groups in A-levels & SPM, I needed to learn the material, and figure out how to teach it in the way that made the most sense to them. This also meant understanding the material inside and out. I got 4A*’s in A-levels, 8A+ 1A SPM, and 1st class in Uni, without ever going to tuition. All in the pursuit of being good enough to help those around me. I also don’t feel like it was that hard because I was teaching & helping others, so those academic journeys were pretty fun.

I take these same mindsets into business, tech & marketing too. This is where I’m at now. Though I have found things harder, since the measurement of success in these areas is more probabilistic and less directly in my control. Though with that said, you actually can control probability, you just can’t control outcome. And this is an area I haven’t fully understood but want to.

I also realised not all teaching is the same

I could teach moral studies to a group of form 1 students in rural sarawak (which I have done before), but the net impact of my existence in the world wouldn’t be as much as say teaching 10000 students studying skills that helps them learn better. I’m also not in competition and trying to have more impact than anyone else. In fact my best case is I get joined by a lot more people who try to compete to create more impact too haha because I want the world to be better, I want people’s lives to be better, I believe it can be because there’s no true fundamental reason it can’t.

Being one of the main organisers of the National AI Competition which just concluded (13th June), was an example of this. We got nearly 2000 students from across Malaysia working on generative AI problem statements and tracks, which we intentionally designed to get students to learn skills that are going to be extremely relevant in the next 3-5 years, and can create significant impact. I designed the generative arts & innovation tracks, ran the workshops, and carefully designed them to get students excited about building and storytelling, via the fun factor, to get to escape velocity. And damn, they did. This will likely have an impact far beyond just the participants due to the viral nature of these projects, and I’ll hope to see that over time.

Impact doesn’t mean with the absense of money btw. Money & incentives drives the world. And profitability can be an important part of impact. Money is what’s ultimately needed for social mobility, so the goal of a changemaker should also be to enable communities to make more money.

Concluding ideas

I’m optimistic things can change. Things are changing. The world is changing faster than ever before, and yet we tend to assume the challenging things are constant. My role is to be one (of many) people who accelerate things in this region.

Anyone can be an accelerant. Everyone has their own angles, stories, leverages to do it & can tackle different problems, and even just a small group of people who believe in a better world can make a very outsized impact on the world.

When it comes to technologies like social media and AI that can be controversial, my opinion is - if the technology can be used for good to improve things, we absolutely should use it. But for use cases that are responsible. Especially if our intentions are good.