Hi there, I'm

Aasim Sani

I am a

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whoami

I'm a 2x AI startup founder - most recently, I founded CopyCat, (OnDeck Founders 14) a tool to help development teams speed up their web development process by up to 80%. CopyCat uses AI to convert their Figma designs directly to React.js code and has reached 20k+ developers worldwide. I previously also co-founded Orai (Techstars 18), an AI-powered public speaking app that reached more than 500k+ people worldwide and got me into the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Education. Besides this, I am an avid bookworm (Goodreads), an ex-pro cyclist, a certified mountaineer, a semi-pro gamer, and an occasional musician in my free time.


Experience

CopyCat

Jan 2021 - Jun 2023

Co-founder, COO and CAIO

Convert your Figma designs to React.js code in 30 seconds using AI
(Github Co-pilot but for converting designs to code)

My co-founder and I were inspired to start CopyCat after our (painful) experiences fixing issues with the speed of the front-end development process in our previous company. Where the main culprit was the designer-developer handoff process.

So we made CopyCat, a product that converts Figma designs directly to code (React.js) to speed up the development process of a web page by up to 80%. Which has got more than 20k+ users worldwide.

Orai, Inc.

Nov 2016 - Jan 2021

Intern → Product Manager → Co-founder and COO

An AI powered speech coaching app
(Think Duolingo but for Public speaking)

My co-founders and I started Orai because of our experiences as ESL students in the United States. When we came to Drexel, we could speak English fluently, yet we weren't expressive and confident enough, and because of this, we were limited both personally and professionally. We lost friends, internships, and jobs to this problem.

So we tried books, online courses, toastmasters, and finally, a speech coach who offered to coach us for free to fix the issue. Yet when we discovered that a speech coach can charge close to $5000 for that one-hour session, we decided to make an app that could make this quintessential skill accessible to everyone for a lot less. As of today, Orai has scaled to 500k+ users globally, has been adopted by large enterprises such as Comcast, IBM, Nike and HPE. We also fundraised $2.3M from top VC firms such as Comcast Ventures, Menlo VC and BDMI Ventures.


Awards and Involvements

Forbes 30 under 30 - Education (2021)

I am part of the Forbes30u30 list for 2021 in the education category for my work on Orai.

Techstars x Comcast LIFT Labs (2018)

I went through Techstars, one of the world's top startup accelerator programs, in 2018 with Orai as part of Comcast LIFT Labs' inaugural cohort.

ODF14: OnDeck Founders (2022)

I am part of the 14th class of the OnDeck Founders community a curated community designed to increase your odds of building a successful venture-backed company.

Full Stack Deep Learning Best Projects (Spring 2021)

I was selected as one of the top 10 projects out of 271 projects in the Full Stack Deep Learning X Berkley course held in Spring 2021.

Mass Challenge

I was part of the Mass Challenge accelerator program in 2017 that accepts top founders from around the world and provides access to the tools, resources, mentorship, and opportunities innovators need to make transformational impact.

Creative Destruction Labs

Orai was a Finalist in the Creative Destruction Labs Toronto in 2018.

Hack Princeton (Fall 2018)

I participated in the Hack Princeton hackathon in the Fall of 2018 and won the best use of Google Cloud Platform award.

Education

Drexel University

I studied Entrepreneurship and Computer Science with minors in Marketing and Health Innovations while on a 60% scholarship at Drexel University. I was part of the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship which is the world's only dedicated college of entrepreneurship and is ranked #16 globally by the Princeton Review and is #2 in the mid-Atlantic region. It’s was an intense but amazing experience that allowed me to run Orai while studying and work on research, created amazing projects and cycle around Philadelphia a lot!

Mahindra United World College of India

I went to Mahindra United World College to do my IB diploma for the last two years of high school on a 50% scholarship. It is one of 18 schools across the world that "makes education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future." I was a part of the Class of 2016, which consisted of 120 students with more than 60 different countries represented in one year from socio-economic backgrounds spanning children from the village next to the school all the way to royalty. It was a fantastic experience that allowed me to make friends from all around the world and learn about their cultures and ways of life.

Public Speaking

Keynote at Junior Achievement's

Entrepenurship Summit

Unlocking Ambition: Lessons learned as a student entrepeneur

Invited Talk

@ Cigna

Explaining artificial intelligence and how it impacts our professional lives

Drexel Rising Starter's Competiton Keynote

The mindset that got me from intern to co-founder

Is AI Getting Worse?

Make Sense by Lindsay Tabas is a video podcast that simplifies complex issues at the intersection of tech & people.


Projects

MeowLearning

Star
See on Github

This is a pick-your-problem style guide I created to educate everyone, from my leadership team to my ML engineers on working with AI in production settings. This is the stuff you won't learn in most ML/AI courses.

Artificial Manga Panel Dataset

Star
See on Github

I love manga, but I can't read Japanese. And Google Translate isn't so great with Japanese text localization and doesn't offer a free solution for OCR+translation. So I decided to build something to help me translate the manga more efficiently into English. Additionally, the technology to detect speech bubbles could also help official translators translate manga faster. Sadly I couldn't find a free and publicly available dataset to train my speech bubble detector on, so I made this.

Second Brain Slipbox

Sneak a peek of my second brain

Why build a Second Brain?
For me, it was the fact that even though I have a good memory. It just isn't enough to solve problems fast. I'm an avid reader and podcast listener, yet so much of it was getting lost. So I built this system based on the Slipbox Method (Zettelkasten) to help me organize my knowledge in an interconnected way.

ML Project Template

Star
See on Github


A template repository to kickstart new Machine Learning projects I built to allow CopyCat's ML team to quickly spin up projects in a standardized manner that saved nearly 2 hours of setup.

Agile Connects

Energy savings algorithm Development

I researched an algorithm for calculating the theoretical maximum possible energy savings and cost savings from air conditioning units which would use scheduling algorithms to turn on and off using AgileConnects' IOT products.

News and media

Podcasts

Articles


Research

Founderitis a silent killer of startups

Read the case study

A case study I wrote based on my own personal experiences through Orai and our founder struggles that shows how power imbalances within teams can result in catastrophic and cascading failures.

Activating Entrepeneurship

"Activating Entrepreneurship: revisiting the theories of planned behavior & the entrepreneurial event through an analysis of the moderating & mediating effects of entrepreneurial dimensions on self-efficacy & initial intentions to launch" is a research study I did with Dr Zahed Subhan, Dr. Liza Herzog and Dr. David Hayes.

The study focused on performing a statistical moderation and mediation analysis on specific psychometric characteristics of college students, such as "Resilience" and their influence on the decision to launch a startup.