§ 01
GROWTH MACHINES
Distribution, conversion, retention and pricing. Why some grow while others stall.
DATA DOG · PHILOSOPHER
BRICKS · BITS · BEHAVIOUR
R.A.E* APENA
✦ (RAY) | RAIMUNDO | RAYMOND | REY | REYNARD | OK I'M STOPPING HERE
I’m a 23-year-old builder designing AI, growth, and operating systems for companies moving from zero to scale. I left Cambridge to build and fund companies, after holding two scholarships and designing my own course across mathematical logic, law, and art history. Currently building in stealth across AI, physical infra and human experience.
GROWTHAIOPSBUILDSELLSCALEDATASYSTEMSPHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURESTRANGE LOOPSGROWTHAIOPSBUILDSELLSCALEDATASYSTEMSPHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURESTRANGE LOOPS
§ 01 — CURRENT§
CURRENT
STEALTH STARTUP
Founding Bricklayer (Operator). Building across AI/data systems, physical infrastructure, and human experience.
§ 01
GROWTH ENGINES
Distribution, conversion, retention, pricing, and feedback loops.
§ 02
DATA, ML & AI INFRA
Analytics, machine learning, internal tools, and decision systems.
§ 03
OPERATING SYSTEMS
Turning ambiguous company-building into repeatable execution.
§ 02 — EXPERIENCE§
XP
A partial log of technical, operating, and investing chapters. Reverse chronological as Hegel intended.
- FEB 2026 — NOW
STEALTH STARTUP
Founding Operator
London · San Francisco · Austin
- 2025 — 2026
Data / Growth / AI Stack—Full-stack engineering, analytics, machine learning; built AI & data stack, driving GTM and ops.
- 2025
Visiting Associate (Trial)—Backing technical founders from inception. Backed by Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Patrick Collison (Stripe), and Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind).
- 2025
Private Equity—Industrials & Defence; special situations and turnarounds. Originated $75 – $150 million investments.
- 2024
Strategic Projects—AI, robotics, defence; incubations and strategic investments. Led $5m strategic investment.
- 2022 — 2024
CUR8
Co-Founder / Fullstack Engineer—Built a cross-platform personalisation engine for user algorithmic sovereignty; led team of 7.
- 2021 — 2024
Full Scholar / Research / Investment Banking—Full Scholarship; Global Coding Challenge top ~0.5% out of 23,000+.
- 2021
Law, Art History & Philosophy—Double Scholarship (Credit Suisse, A&O Shearman); Dropped out to build.
§ 03 — INTERESTS§
SYSTEMS I CARE ABOUT
Four loops I keep returning to by building, breaking, and thinking inside.
§ 02
MAPS & TERRITORIES
Cartography, spatial representation, Chinese visual culture, and the strange compromises involved in flattening a world.
EXPLORE ATLAS§ 03
THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD
Robotics, manufacturing, energy, defence, infrastructure, and technologies that reshape the physical world.
§ 04
STRANGE LOOPS
Philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, taste, agency, and the odd ways minds build models of reality. Mostly curiosity (but occasionally useful).
§ 04 — ESSAYS§
WRITING
Essays on ambition, systems, institutions, technology, and the weird machinery underneath modern life.
§ 05 — LIBRARY§
LIBRARY
Books I actually remember I've read.
CURRENTLY READING
HistoryNon-Fic
Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, the Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class
Luke Barr
2018
How Ritz and Escoffier turned luxury into a system: service, food and status engineered into the modern hotel.
FIRST READ: 2026
BusinessNon-Fic
How to Start a Cult
Jody Raynsford
2021
For research purposes ofc.
FIRST READ: 2026
FantasyFiction
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence
R. F. Kuang
2022
Closest I'll get to visiting the "other place" (Oxf*rd).
FIRST READ: 2026
RECENTLY READ
BusinessNon-Fic
Making It Big
Femi Otedola
2025
A Nigerian business career told through leverage, reversals and recovery. A genuinely useful insight into operating in instability.
FIRST READ: 2025
FantasyFiction
Kagurabachi
Takeru Hokazono
2023
A revenge story with momentum that avoids treading through a minefield of tropes.
FIRST READ: 2024
HistoryNon-Fic
The Genesis of Industrial America, 1870–1920
Maury Klein
2007
How railways, corporations, overworked labour and mass production assembled modern American industry and the institutions built around it.
FIRST READ: 2024
BiographyNon-Fic
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
L. T. C. Rolt
1957
Engineering at civilisational scale: railways, bridges and ships pursued with extraordinary ambition and uneven regard for cost.
FIRST READ: 2024
BiographyNon-Fic
Invention: A Life of Learning through Failure
James Dyson
2021
Iteration means tolerating thousands of failed versions without treating failure as evidence that the problem is insoluble.
FIRST READ: 2023
BusinessNon-Fic
The Xiaomi Way
Li Wanqiang
2015
How Xiaomi used online communities, rapid feedback and tightly managed launches to turn users into its distribution system.
FIRST READ: 2023
§ CONTACT
I AM THE ONE WHO KNOCKS.
JK, feel free to reach out below!
© 2026 RAYMOND AKOLA-EREWUNMI APENA
PHILOSOPHER | DATA DAWG