This Develoing Story - 35: CFP accepted

Quick background: I used to code. Studied it in school, wrote some projects, but eventually convinced myself I wasn't cut out for it. Too slow, too many bugs, imposter syndrome — the usual story. So I pivoted, ended up as an investment associate at an early-stage angel fund, and haven't written real code in years. Fast forward to now. I'm a Buffett nerd — big believer in compound interest as a mental model for life. I run compound interest calculations constantly. Not because I need to, but because watching numbers grow over 30-40 years keeps me patient when markets get wild. It's basically…

I've been using this daily for 4 months and figured others might find it useful. This is my first open source project so would love any feedback. Ray connects to your bank via Plaid, stores everything in an encrypted local SQLite database, and lets you ask questions about your finances in natural language. No cloud, no account, your data is stored on your machine. Before anything reaches the LLM, all PII is stripped — your name, companies, transaction details are redacted and replaced with tokens, then rehydrated locally in the response. The AI never sees who you are.

5/6 · The workflow of a professional quant trading firm.

Founder of QuantStart & machine learning consultant to funds

I built this after struggling to find relevant grants and fellowships myself. The project started at the EF Hackathon as a credit underwriting and matching agent for founders. After speaking with founders and students, it became clear that discovery itself was the bigger problem. Most people do not know what grants or non-dilutive options exist for them. So I iterated and built 21st.fund. You describe who you are and what you are building, and the tool surfaces relevant grants, fellowships, and programs. The goal is to reduce time spent digging through scattered government sites, PDFs, and…

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