Engineer by craft, entrepreneur by passion—building products that matter | 150+ products built | Founder of Crayon’d | Innovator | Mentor | Venture studio in the making 🎯

I shipped my first edtech product on a floppy disk when I was just 17.

It was 2001, and as a student entrepreneur, I set out to solve a simple problem—

Helping my peers learn vocabulary faster.

Who knew that tiny floppy disk would spark a lifelong passion for:

Technology
Innovation &
Problem-solving

Today, with 150+ products built across 12+ industries, I’ve learned that building impactful solutions requires more than technical skills—

It’s about:

Resilience
Purpose
People

Every failure, every connection, and every opportunity has shaped me into four things:

𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘵. 𝘌𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘶𝘳. 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦-𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘳. 𝘔𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘳.

✅ 𝐀𝐬 𝐚 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭

For over two decades, technology has been my craft and calling.

- Built 150+ products for startups, scale-ups, and enterprises.
- Led ERP implementations and created cutting-edge solutions.
- Delivered transformative products across North America, APAC, EMEA.

✅ 𝐀𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫

Entrepreneurship wasn’t a choice—it was a calling.

- Bootstrapped five startups in edtech, mobility, ERP, and digital transformation.
- Founded Crayon’d, partnering with startups and enterprises to create scalable products.
- Built strong, people-first cultures that drive organic growth.

𝘍𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴?

Well, I’ve had my share.

But as a first-generation entrepreneur from a humble background I learned to embrace failure. 

My mantra—

“𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.”

✅ 𝐀𝐬 𝐚 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫

I believe in using technology to solve meaningful problems.

Some of the initiatives I’ve launched:

𝐔𝐝𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐦: A geo-based platform for blood donations.
𝐁𝐞𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐇𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫: An afforestation drive to fight global warming.
𝐀𝐯𝐚𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐦 108: A solution to help ambulances clear traffic efficiently.

I’m driven by the belief that—

“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 5% 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 95% 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘵.”

✅ 𝐀𝐬 𝐚 𝐌𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐫

Early in my journey, I lacked exposure and mentorship. 

Today, I strive to give back by:

Guiding young talent, especially those overlooked by traditional systems.
Inspiring first-time founders and student entrepreneurs.

𝘔𝘺 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯?

To build the next generation of leaders.
To help them embrace entrepreneurship as a path to impact.

...

Bold ideas deserve world-class execution. 

Let’s collaborate to design, build & scale something truly extraordinary 🤝

Email: makesh@crayond.com

Makesh Gopalakrishnan

CEO @ Corner Alliance | Author @ The Small Business Mentor

I spent 17 years and $200K+ hunting through every business course, mastermind, and guru to find the nuggets that actually work.

EOS? Implemented it. Scaling Up? Read it. EO/YPO? Joined both.

The result? 10,000+ hours distilled into OwnerRx - the AI coach that knows every framework, every playbook, every shortcut.

What it took me years and big dollars to learn, OwnerRx delivers in seconds for a fraction of the cost.

Alan Pentz

If you're a CEO and people in your company are resisting AI adoption, fire them.

The time for org change initiatives is over. Just bring in new people with clear expectations.

It's harsh I know, but pretty soon you're going to get fired because you haven't acted. 

Maybe that's your Board or maybe it's your customer.

Remember the one that said they don't want an AI solution but their boss just said take the vendor who can deliver 10x as much at half the cost?

Yeah, that one will fire you.

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Founder

Working with government and non-profit leaders to innovate, communicate, and build better programs, including the Department of Homeland Security, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Department of Commerce.

Building the always on AI-enabled strategic copilot for SMB owners.

Owner

Board Member

Owner Institute helps owners grow their businesses while achieving independence.

Director

Principal

extreme blue intern

Speechwriter

Owner @ OwnerRx.com | OwnerRx uses battle-tested playbooks from decades of building and coaching SMBs to create AI agents that run your business for you. | Read my newsletter: newsletter.ownerrx.com

I've spent most of my 18 years as the owner of a professional services business watching my firm's collective knowledge walk out the door each evening.

That was just the nature of the game. Knowledge workers have the knowledge.

Sure you can document some processes but that's a fraction of what's really going on.

I've been watching AI change that in real time as I've been:
- Capturing what we learn in every client conversation
- Documenting the 'why' behind our decisions, not just the 'what'
- Preserving the problem-solving process, not just the solutions

This is encoding the knowledge in my business into software.

Now a new employee can instantly access all the accumulated learnings of my business without any experience and while knowledge still walks out the door, a version of it stays encoded.

I call it knowledge programming.

That's going to completely change the game for professional services and all business. It's the next evolution of knowledge work.

Over the last two months, I haven't opened a Google Doc or Word doc once.

When I'm forced to, it feels like pulling out a typewriter. Where's the white-out?

I do everything in Claude Code now. It builds documents for me, and honestly, they're just disposable artifacts anyway.

I've realized that software is just a way of talking to a computer to get what you want. Claude Code makes English the best programming language.

I don't know how to code, but I talk with Claude Code and it does the programming for me.

It's a new way to work and I call in "knowledge programming." 

It's not quite traditional knowledge work and it's not quite coding. It's somewhere in between.

The critical skill is knowing what output you want and explaining it clearly. Claude writes the code to execute it.

Any repeated task? I turn it into an agent or set of agents, then refine their processes each day.

Given the productivity increases I'm seeing, I think we'll start seeing this way of working go mainstream in 2026.

I'm teaching business owners how to do this at OwnerRx. So check it out if you're curious.

We built an AI system that landed a small marketing agency owner two new clients in less than two weeks.

The system scraped a lead database, enriched each lead with web data, and delivered qualified prospects to her inbox every morning.

It worked but here's what I quickly realized:

That system could deliver 100-300x more leads and customers but it requires more work and tuning and we weren't resourced for it. Why?

Every week, her definition of a "good lead" shifted. New service offering? Different ideal client profile. Won a big account in healthcare? Now she wants more of those. Lost a pitch? Time to filter out that segment.

The AI could adapt to all of this. But only if someone knew how to tell it what "good" meant this week.

The insight:

We talk about AI enabling "outcome-based work." But outcomes aren't static. They shift constantly.

That's the gap most companies miss. They want one-and-done AI implementations. Set it and forget it.

But AI systems need constant dialogue and tuning. Someone who speaks both business and machine.

That's not a consultant you hire once. That's a skill your team needs to own.

That's why OwnerRx is shifting our model to training a new class of business analysts. 

They aren't technical but we can give them ai tools like Claude Code and teach them enough to take the results they are observing and tune the agents. It's like a new kind of Forward Deployed Engineer.

Sometimes I feel like a time traveler. 

I'm from three to five years from now after the extinction event happens in professional services and knowledge work industries.

I've become 10-20x more productive in the last two to three months with Claude Code.

I can't even imagine what it'll be like in six months much like three to five years.

If you aren't talking to customers or in Claude Code all day long, you're doing something wrong.

No one cares that it's not fair or that it hasn't worked yet. All that matters is that I'm 10-20x more productive.

Are you?

"Whoever wins vibe coding wins how you work on your computer." Dan Shipper, Every.to.

I read this and immediately posted it. This is the truest thing I've seen in a while.

Vibe coding is speaking English to computers and getting what you want back.

Whomever wins it becomes the new Microsoft. 

Hint, that won't be Microsoft. 

My guess is Anthropic walks away with it but there are rounds left to be played.

taplio

The Battle

Makesh Gopalakrishnan

Alan Pentz

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The Battle

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