# Yuehan John — Career history

Canonical page: https://yuehanjohn.com/history

## Summary

Yuehan John has been writing code since age 14 — across Thailand, Finland, and Silicon Valley — accumulating 8 years of hands-on product and software experience across AI, marketplaces, and community platforms. He has led teams, raised pre-seed funding through Antler, and organized large-scale events, demonstrating rare breadth for his age: technical depth, commercial instinct, and the operational range to build from zero. Currently working as AI Developer at Kokit, and founding Since Labs, an AI-native agency.

## Key metrics

- Yrs Building: 8+
- Raised: €250K+
- Event Attendees: 250+
- Hrs Saved: 1K+

## Career timeline

### 2015 · Age 10 · China → Thailand

Relocated to Thailand for international schooling. Eight years, English-medium.

- **International Relocation**: Enrolled in international school in Thailand. Eight years across cultures, English-medium from the start.
- **Cross-Cultural Foundation**: Not rooted to one market, one language, or one way of thinking — built in from age 10.

### 2019 · Age 14 · Self-taught

Self-taught Python. Finished a year's course in one month. Then HTML and CSS.

- **Python — 1 Year in 1 Month**: Started with Python turtle, got addicted. Finished the full curriculum independently in four weeks.
- **First Websites**: Built sites in plain HTML and CSS. No framework, no roadmap — the builder identity formed here.

### 2020 · Age 15 · Thailand

First income: homework sales, car washing. Learned Unity and C#. Shipped games.

- **First Income Streams**: Monetized homework answers and a car-washing service. Commercial instinct predates the technical career.
- **Unity · C# · Game Dev**: Learned Unity and C#; built and shipped small games independently. Code as a product, not just a hobby.

### 2021 · Age 16–17 · Thailand → Finland

Ran a night-market stall. Moved to Turku, Finland alone at 17.

- **Night-Market Retail Stall**: Sourcing, pricing, direct customer sales. Margins are real and customers are merciless.
- **Relocated to Finland Alone**: A car accident became a catalyst. Decided on a Nordic university and packed up for Turku, Finland alone at 17.
- **JavaScript · Java · AP Exam**: Self-taught JS, Java, and advanced Python. Compressed a semester-long AP course into one week and passed comfortably.

### 2022 · Age 17 · Turku, Finland

Entered the startup ecosystem. First AI work: stock prediction, YOLO image recognition.

- **Boost Turku**: Began attending Boost Turku events — first real immersion in the startup ecosystem and founder culture.
- **Stock Prediction Model**: Built, trained, tuned, and tested an ML stock-prediction model end to end in Google Colab.
- **YOLO · Image Recognition**: Trained image-recognition models (YOLO). First serious AI work before pivoting to agents.

### 2023 · Age 18 · Turku

Led a 5-person international team. Built the whole product. Realized agents beat algorithms.

- **Fucard**: AI loyalty and analytics app for restaurants and SMBs. Owned the full build — led a 5-person international team through execution.
- **Shift to AI Agents**: Reoriented from ML modeling to AI agent development. The application is the moat, not the algorithm.
- **TurkuAMK Robotics Club**: Co-founded the Robotics Club — opened university resources to students across all disciplines.

### 2024 · Age 19 · Finland + Silicon Valley

Won the incubator. Flew to Silicon Valley. 200+ freelancers onboarded.

- **Startup Journey — 1st Place**: Competed solo against 10+ teams. Won first place. Earned a 2-week Silicon Valley trip.
- **Silicon Valley**: Met Slack's co-founder/CTO, Notion's CEO, MySQL's founder, HackerOne's ex-CEO. Visited Stanford.
- **Newbility MVP**: Built an AI freelancer-vetting tool for Upwork/Fiverr solo — working MVP, customer interviews, real traction.
- **Freelance Marketplace**: Pivoted to a video-editor marketplace. Led 3 developers, 200+ freelancers onboarded, 2,000+ waitlist, 100+ clients.
- **Founder Institute**: Completed the 4-month program through weekly elimination rounds.

### 2025 · Age 20 · Turku

Organized a 200-person, 3-day hackathon. From zero to the city's biggest event.

- **Since AI Hackathon**: 200 attendees, 3 days, €10k prize pool, fully catered. Led 3-person core team and 50-person on-site crew.
- **300 Applications in 1 Month**: Marketing drove 300 applications before the event. Became one of Turku's largest events on its first edition.
- **EiR · Boost Turku**: Entrepreneur in Residence — mentored early-stage founders across the ecosystem.
- **Arise — AI Consultant**: AI Consultant at TurkuAMK's Arise project: building AI-driven robots to support factory workers, from zero to proof-of-technology.

### 2026 · Age 21 · Active (current)

Pre-seed from Antler. AI infrastructure for an entire company. Founded an agency.

- **Silt — Co-Founder**: One canvas for a team's AI chats, decisions, and reasoning trails. Built MVP and raised pre-seed from Antler.
- **Kokit — AI Developer**: Built AI-native infrastructure from scratch: per-employee AI agents on a shared company knowledge base with tracked decisions.
- **Since Labs — Founder**: AI-native agency building automation and AI infrastructure for traditional SMBs.
- **CAD Thailand**: Built the website for CAD Chiang Mai — a 2,000-year-old cultural event drawing ~20,000 attendees.

## Companies & organizations

| Year | Organization | Role | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2023 | Fucard | Founder & Lead Dev | AI loyalty and analytics app for restaurants. Led 5-person international team. |
| 2023 | Robotics Club | Co-Founder | Co-founded TurkuAMK's Robotics Club — opened university resources to students across disciplines. |
| 2024 | Kaewtaart | Contractor | Delivered a project for one of Thailand's leading supply companies. |
| 2024 | Newbility | Founder | AI freelancer-vetting tool. Pivoted to video-editor marketplace — 200+ freelancers, 2,000+ waitlist. |
| 2024 | Founder Institute | Fellow | Completed the 4-month program through weekly elimination rounds. |
| 2025 | Since AI | Founder | Non-profit for AI accessibility. Ran the Since AI Hackathon — 200 attendees, €10k prizes. |
| 2025 | Boost Turku | Entrepreneur in Residence | Mentored early-stage founders across the Turku startup ecosystem. |
| 2025 | Arise · TurkuAMK | AI Consultant | Built AI-driven robots to support factory workers, from zero to proof-of-technology. |
| 2025 | Business Turku | Collaborator | Worked with Turku's city-level business development organization. |
| 2025 | Slush | Collaborator | Worked with Europe's leading startup conference. |
| 2026 | Antler | Cohort · Portfolio | Raised pre-seed for Silt through Antler's global VC and accelerator program. |
| 2026 | Silt | Co-Founder | AI canvas for team reasoning and decisions. Raised pre-seed from Antler. |
| 2026 | CAD Thailand | Web Developer | Built the website for CAD Chiang Mai — a 2,000-year-old cultural event drawing ~20,000 attendees. |
| 2026 | Kokit (current) | AI Developer | Built AI-native infrastructure from scratch — per-employee agents on a shared company knowledge base. |
| 2026 | Since Labs (current) | Founder | AI-native agency building automation infrastructure for traditional SMBs. |