Melbourne, Australia
2026
Milestone
Pitching to VCs
I pitched and received notable interest from climate and student focused VCs, and became the only high schooler to be accepted as a student fellow to Startmate, Australia's biggest accelerator.
Project
Eight weeks in climate tech
With no background in energy, I taught myself decarbonisation from first principles and interviewed key leaders across the industry, trying to find the root of the biggest problems in Australian decarbonisation. I ended up spending the program focusing on how we can use data centres to accelerate the national and global clean energy transition.
Pivot
Pivot to climate tech
I was accepted as the youngest ever founder to Australia's largest climate tech pre-accelerator, EnergyLab. Fun fact: I was so young that I was not allowed to participate in the first week of the program until I turned 18.
Milestone
Top 25% of 179 projects
Placed top 25% in the hackathon against graduate researchers, industry ML engineers and SWEs as a high school student, which attracted the interest of Maincode, the Melbourne startup behind Australia's first national LLM.
Project
Apart Research Secret Loyalties Hackathon
Emboldened by my newfound passion for research from the evaluation I had just built, I decided to have a crack at one of Apart Research's hackathons to see if I could break into the scene as a 17-year-old.
Project
DocQAGroundingEval
What began as a way to interactively learn Python turned into an open-source evaluation harness, testing whether frontier models rely on the document in front of them or fall back on what they already believe, connecting back to my takeoff automation work.
Pivot
Pivot to AI safety research
Writing the takeoff case study gave me a deeper interest in the technical side of AI, which took me into AI safety research.
Project
A Case Study in the Limits of Takeoff Automation
I couldn't get a startup out of the problem I found, but finally understanding the reason why reframed my whole perspective on AI and its limitations, so I wrote a research note on it.
Pivot
Pivot to consulting
Started implementing AI into real workflows for multiple different businesses, looking for a real problem worth building my next startup around. One business included a steel frames manufacturer. That one's important for what comes next. Along the way, I built a database that maps the national 'modern methods of construction' industry which supported housing initiatives made by the state government.
Milestone
First exit
Exited QuoteReady for thousands of dollars. I didn't have the founder-market fit for this product, so I made it valuable for someone that did have it, making a nice profit on the side.
Project
QuoteReady
Bought some Claude and Cursor subscriptions to launch my first startup, an app to help tradies cut down their quoting times. I had no experience in trades.
2025
Milestone
Got my high school diploma a year early
Received my ATAR one year early through my school's selective entry accelerated program. I decided to stay back in school and spend the year learning everything I could about AI. This is where it all begins.
Contact
andrewngo315@gmail.com