Beyond Frontiers

On exploration, innovation, and purpose

November 2024

I grew up idolizing history's great explorers and inventors. I knew everything a kid could know about Leonardo da Vinci and once dressed up as Neil Armstrong for a school project on historical role models. When people asked me what I wanted to be, I would say, “An inventor!” I also distinctly remember hearing the well-worn phrase, “Born too late to explore the world, and too early to explore the stars.” As a young teen, that left a pit in my stomach. I wanted to sail towards uncharted lands or launch into space and make distant galaxies less distant. Equally, the drive to create was driven by a contrarian spirit and restless energy – I wanted to build things that challenged what we believed possible.

A restless drive to explore has always stirred the human spirit. There seems to be an eternal spark within man to see the unseen and do the undone, fueled by nothing more than the iconic response George Mallory gave when asked why he climbed Everest, "Because it's there".¹ At 18, I was handed To the Last Breath, a book by a man named Francis Slakey who surfed every ocean and climbed the highest peaks on each continent. His story inspired me, so that summer I flew up to Alaska to learn mountaineering skills on a glacier for 10 days. Excited to test my limits, I spent days in constant hunger, my feet shriveled from soaked boots that never dried. It was brutally cold and tiring at the time, but I am so glad I went through the pain. Over the next couple of years, I summited Mt. Whitney in California and attempted the Eiger in Switzerland, both as unassisted winter solos. Being alone on the side of a mountain is surreal. There is no cheating; you either push yourself to the summit or fail. Words can hardly capture that feeling, and perhaps that’s the point. There’s something deeper at play.

The afterglow of going to Alaska lasted years. When people asked me where I saw myself in the future, my answer shifted from “ be an inventor” to simply “be in a cabin in Alaska”. Around the same time, I had been trading crypto for a couple of years when I came across algorithmic trading accounts on Twitter. At the time I had manual trading strategies and thought “I should just automate this”. I set out to learn Python to code a trading bot, a task I assumed would take a month or two. Over the next two years, I taught myself programming and built multiple trading strategies. The experience was invaluable in both programming and risk management – even as I moved away from trading to focus on new projects. I now realize that I was just finding my way back to the original spark. I severely underestimated how much time, energy, and focus it would demand, but that’s the nature of any true commitment. Blind confidence and optimism are key to any adventure; if Magellan and his crew had known the true vastness of the oceans, they might never have attempted to circumnavigate the globe. As I look to the future, I'm driven to bring these passions together, embracing the adventure in innovation and pushing the limits of what's possible.

I believe that being made in God’s image gives us our spark, calling us to forge, discover, and reach beyond as part of our very nature. The act of creation itself is the ultimate form of worshiping our Creator. Johannes Kepler introduced the idea that God the creator wanted man to be able to share in His thoughts. Moving the needle of innovation is not just a personal ambition, it is a meaningful purpose for all of man to be a part of something bigger and contribute to a higher calling. Exploring is a quest for God’s truth and creating feels like the ultimate act of reverence. I do not seek to innovate for the sake of innovation but with the hope of lifting humanity higher. This is why I admire the great explorers and inventors of history – they used their deep ambition to change the world.² I also know that humans are inherently imperfect, and being made in the image of God means we can only strive to be like Him. The balance between humility and ambition is essential, reminding us that we are not the ultimate source of knowledge, truth, and talent, but rather vessels through which God can shine. We need not prove our worth, but instead pursue the ultimate purpose that has been woven into our nature.

Thus, as we embark on our endeavors, we carry both reverence for the divine source of our abilities and a responsibility to use them fully for the betterment of society. As I prepare to graduate, I am determined to transform the pit in my stomach into a relentless drive to push forward with purpose and humility. I may have been born “too late to explore the world,” yet I believe endless frontiers are waiting to be discovered. The frontiers, although different than those that George Mallory faced a century ago, are no less vast. In this era of rapid progress, I feel blessed to become a contributor to this unfolding story, embracing each step of the challenging journey as an act of reverence for the One who inspires it all.