Arshan Shokoohi

18 | Serial Autodidact | building

[Arshan Shokoohi @arshantwts]

It’s weird how quickly your life trajectory can change when something doesn’t go the way you envisioned it would

After getting rejected UCSD/UCLA/UCB, I decided to take that as a sign to pursue entrepreneurship, since going to a low-mid tier UC, doesn’t surround me in the environment and demographic I’d want to be around.

Why did I get rejected? I spent my time in high school building and pursuing projects I enjoyed instead of maximizing studying time, simply because my passions are multi disciplinary. In combination with my home life / commuting situation, I was stretching myself thin at a point where I was taking on the most ambitious schedule in school I’ve taken.

Sure the option of CC and transfer exists as a means of an academic reset and many people push me towards it. But that time spent on more schooling takes time away from my ventures when my attention had always already been splitted. Every hour matters, the ability to not be distracted matters.

And CC will always be there. But the opportunity to build and grow with AI, at this level won’t be. The field will only get more saturated from here.

I’m planning to re apply to all 4 years this upcoming year, including privates, just to keep my options open and to fix all the mistakes I made in my original application and include all the new achievements I have.

I thought about what I’m building and I don’t see my consumer app failing under any reasonable cases.

I’m launching by the end of this month.

> If the app is buggy, that’s a few prompts away from fixing.
> If distribution sucks, that’s okay, with fully autonomy I can dictate how to pivot and improve. Anyways I have experience with social media so I already have many ideas on what to do.
> The app idea? Completely untapped at the detail I’m engineering the product at.
> Anything requiring expertise / domain experience I don’t have? Frontier AI models teach me.

Everything difficult I’ve built in high school, I see as an extremely effective microcosm of entrepreneurship because they all stemmed from my relentless drive to get something done at a high level. I don’t see why I shouldn’t pursue replicating this in a product that could better the lives of many.

As I see it the risk I’m taking is minimal and the upside has no ceiling.

My only bottlenecks are my personal performance, & financial security.

Currently I lose ~4-5 hours a day to the logistics and presence of high school, not to mention losing moments of incredible flow state when I’m building in class and I’m told to do an assignment. Just imagine how much more I can get done when I graduate and that friction is removed.

I’ve dumped $1k+ in accumulated costs on Ceeya, it’s been through countless product pivots, technical rebuilds, but I’m finally converging on a product I think will shake up the entire food scanning space.

I’m really excited for the future.

[Ceeya App @Ceeya_app]

🔥 Join the Ceeya waitlist now and claim your early access before it runs out.
https://t.co/E9rzvOUV3T

[Ceeya App @Ceeya_app]

Arshan Shokoohi is the founder.
Github : https://t.co/auXkycpPwl
Twitter : https://t.co/qcb31IRMUx

[Arshan Shokoohi @arshantwts]

after thinking on it I’d want to bootstrap anyways but being t10 percent is sick!!

[Ceeya App @Ceeya_app]

ceeya is all the answers when you want to live healthy.

https://t.co/E9rzvOUV3T

[Ceeya App @Ceeya_app]

Four beliefs, plain.

[Ceeya App @Ceeya_app]

We've always thought "healthy" was the same for everyone.
But what? Your body has unique nutritional needs.
Ceeya helps you evaluate your food personally —
in 2 seconds.
Because what's healthy for you might not be healthy for someone else.
https://t.co/E9rzvOUV3T

[Arshan Shokoohi @arshantwts]

Ceeya is still under heavy development, pushing release to mid-June. Need time for beta testers, and need time for Apple to approve my organization, and for myself to get everything financial/legal set up.

During the downtime of waiting for Ceeya's agents to finish, I've been using my Codex tokens to build a second app.

I'm taking a unique approach where Ceeya I'm heavily involved in, while this second app, I'm okay with many imperfections and give the AI full autonomy / direction with the app. Curious to see how it ends up. Really untapped app idea, will show more details soon!

I'm also graduating high school in a week so I'm a bit bombarded with IRL events I have to attend. I'm also finishing up a film I wrote for my Digital Media class about AI sycophancy & relationships!