My cofounder and I were rivals at hackathons. At 21, I've put college on hold to build a startup with him.

• At 21, Raymond Loong Ng put college on hold after his startup raised $250,000 from VC firm Afore Capital.
• He and his cofounder spent two months in a program in San Francisco, working on their startup.
• A subsequent investment brought their total funding to $1 million, and they're now back in Singapore awaiting O-1 visas.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Raymond Loong Ng, 21, the cofounder of Makeable, a San Francisco-based startup. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I was born in Vietnam and moved to Singapore when I was 9. As a kid, I always had some kind of side hustle. In school, I sold toys, snacks, in-game currency, and sneakers to my classmates — anything that might earn me a little extra pocket money.

When I was 16, I did an internship at an auditing firm, where I had the chance to speak with a lot of business owners. I began to see technology as a tool that could help me advance in the business world.

I ended up getting a diploma in applied AI and analytics at a polytechnic after finishing secondary school. I was never the best at math or coding, but it offered me a way to turn my ideas into actual projects.

I always saw myself as the connector: I could spot a problem, form a vision, attract resources, then bring in my smartest classmates to make things happen.

That was how I began building projects of my own. I built an AI tool that helps ex-offenders build résumés and find jobs. I also started a community of young AI builders that runs workshops for students across Singapore.

From rivals to cofounders

In school, the projects we built often felt theoretical. Participating in hackathons gave me the chance to build solutions under real-world market constraints.

Although we had crossed paths earlier through a separate scholarship program, hackathons were also how I got to know the person who would later become my cofounder better.

We competed as rivals on different teams, but would often find ourselves among the only people still working at 2 or 3 a.m. Eventually, we decided we wanted to be on the same team.

We started entering competitions together in late 2023 and went on a winning streak. We soon realized that full software solutions were becoming harder to differentiate in hackathons as AI tools and models advanced.

We ventured into hardware because it gave AI a way to be deployed in the real world.

At a medical technology hackathon in 2025, we built a device to help paralyzed patients communicate through brainwaves and eye blinks. That became our startup, Neural Drive. The product caught the attention of a local hospital and is set to undergo a clinical trial there.

At the same time, I was trying to find my way to the US.

I grew up fascinated by the people and stories of Silicon Valley. My favorite films were "Jobs" and "The Social Network," and they made me feel that if I wanted to build something that could change the world, I had to be there.

While serving my two years of mandatory military service, I applied to several US colleges but was rejected by all. I ended up being accepted into the computer science program at the National University of Singapore, but I still wanted to go to the States.

I kept reaching out to venture capital firms in the US, and Neural Drive eventually caught the attention of Afore Capital in June.

In June, Afore Capital made a $250,000 pre-seed investment in Neural Drive. My cofounder and I then joined its two-month Founders-in-Residence program in San Francisco.

The timing was tricky. College was due to begin in August, so I had to defer my enrollment before classes started. My cofounder had to request a leave of absence from school, too.

It wasn't an easy decision, but we took a bet on ourselves.

I found a city that moved as fast as I did

I had visited Shenzhen in China before and expected Silicon Valley to look even more futuristic. Instead, I was surprised by how ordinary it looked. Because we were scrimping on rent, we moved into a hacker house in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood.

Those two months in San Francisco were intense, but incredibly rewarding. We were often working until 4 a.m., but we made as much progress as we would have in two years in Singapore.

The sheer density of talent inspired us: "What are you working on?" felt like the way people said hello. It was a city full of workaholics. I thought: This is my kind of place.

We went through several pivots before landing on Makeable, our startup that lets people build a physical product from an idea. All they have to do is describe their idea in a prompt.

Makeable can generate everything from the 3D model to the electronics and code, then sends users a kit they can put together themselves, like Lego.

In our final week of the program, Afore Capital made a follow-on investment, bringing our total funding to date to $1 million.

We flew back to Singapore to apply for our O-1 visas. While we're home, we're still working. The plan is to return to San Francisco for the next few years and keep building our company.

I probably have to extend my leave of absence. If it doesn't work out, I'll go back to school. I want to keep that option open. But honestly, I hope I don't have to.