Hey there! 👋
I'm Tilak Shenoy, a software engineer with over 4 years of experience building enterprise systems and customer-facing applications that handle over $10B in business. I’m particularly interested in infrastructure and AI roles at early to mid-stage startups where I can contribute to scaling the business while growing alongside the company. I hold master's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and bachelor's from National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (NITK).
What's my story?
I always strive to learn new things everyday. I got into design during the sophomore year of my undergrad. My friends helped me with designing using Photoshop. I started creating posters, flyers, tickets, and other marketing collateral for events in college for three years. In my senior year, I started learning Illustrator, and I enjoyed every moment of creating designs. I learned more about the subject, exploring other forms of design like packaging, product design, etc. I've worked with marketing agencies, real estate developers, and YouTube creators along the way.
After graduating from NITK, I started working as a software engineer at Wells Fargo. I have created several small apps like Notes, created Notion templates that is being used by over 30 customers and I have made about $50 without any marketing efforts. Over the years, I have worked with several early stage startups as web designer, graphic designer, video editor, software engineer, and android engineer.
What am I up to lately?
I recently wrapped up a product called Chef'd, an app that helps you cook from what's in your pantry. Initially I used a no-code tool called Glide to validate my idea. Within a week, I had over 15 users and I could not scale it without paying $100 a month. I decided to build it from scratch and learned Next.js. The app was up and running within two weeks. It didn't make any business sense to keep the app running as it depended heavily on Open AI. So, I decided to wrap that up.
What do I do apart from design and software?
I enjoy reading books. My favorites so far are Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I also play badminton and enjoy watching Formula 1.