Our Story - Sharpe

Summer had arrived, and Max was finally home from Northeastern. All Leo wanted to do was spend time with him before he went back—get lunch, go to the beach, and even play golf. But every time Leo asked, the answer was the same: "I can't right now," "Tomorrow," "Later." So Leo would end up going with his friends, and sometimes even Max's friends too, because half the time they couldn't get ahold of him either.

Max had just finished his second summer at a quant firm, doing software for the risk team. But now that the internship was over, it was August, and he had one focus: preparing for his upcoming super day and all the other interviews he was doing for the hundreds of other positions he was applying to. Every single day, he'd be on the back patio, talking to ChatGPT's voice mode, running through interview questions over and over.

Choose Your Perspective

Max

I loved the internship. Building systems that worked, that had real impact on money and real people. But when August came, I had to shift into grind mode. The super day wasn't my only interview—there were plenty of other rejections along the way we don't even talk about.

I was on that patio every day, grinding through prep. Paying for platforms, talking to ChatGPT for hours. But I wasn't getting more confident—I was just getting more tired. The tools kept repeating questions, giving feedback that didn't match what I actually needed.

Leo came to me one day with an idea about building a better AI interviewer. I acknowledged it but didn't have the bandwidth. I was too deep in prep mode. Around the same time, he also pitched me an AI nutrition app idea. I wasn't into it either. I just couldn't think about building anything new.

Then came the super day. I went in feeling prepared—I knew the concepts, put in the work. But as the interviews got harder throughout the afternoon, I started losing confidence. I was questioning myself, overthinking every answer. Just minutes after finishing, I told my family I didn't think I performed well. Two weeks later, the rejection email came.

That's when I understood: practice doesn't make perfect—it makes confidence. And I didn't have it when it mattered.

When I got back to Northeastern for junior year, everything hit at once—moving in, starting my co-op work experience, managing an online class. But in early October, once things settled, I started building something. I'd been using Zetamac for mental math practice, but it was frustrating because it only worked well on desktop. I'd always wanted to make an iOS app, and I had a specific goal: train my mental math better so that one day I could be a quant trader. That's what inspired Qalc—short for Qalculate.

I built it in my dorm room between everything else—social life, my co-op, online classes, clubs, etc. Ideas kept flowing. About a week later, I realized something. This was the perfect opportunity to combine Qalc with Leo's idea from the summer. He was right—students needed something efficient they could pick up for five minutes and actually improve. So I called him.

When we talked, I was blown away. Leo had spent that time really developing the vision. He had a ton of feature ideas already mapped out. The plan was there. I could just start executing.

That summer, my life looked very different from Max's. I was interning at a real estate firm, slowly working through college applications, and spending time with friends in between. I was annoyed Max couldn't ever hang out, but I also saw how much he was pouring into preparing for these quant interviews. Quant wasn't just a phase for him—it was what he wanted to do. I understood why he was all in, even if it meant we barely hung out.

Around the same time, I was working on an idea we were both building out together—an AI nutrition app that would integrate with your daily life, like having a nutritionist in your pocket. I brought it to Max, and we were both really into it at first, but right before we were about to enter the development stage, we realized it would be extremely complex to build and could easily be copied by a more reputable company. So we shelved it.

Even though I was still a little upset that our last app didn't go anywhere, watching Max pace back and forth on that patio every day, I began to see a different problem. He was working nonstop, and the tools just weren't doing their job. The AI voice modes he was using to run mock interviews would repeat questions, lose context, and give generic feedback that barely helped him improve. The paid prep platforms weren't much better—he was getting practice questions, sure, but not necessarily the ones he'd actually be asked, and they weren't helping him think out loud in a clearer way. What he really needed was something efficient—something he could open for twenty minutes and actually get sharper with, not something that caused him to waste entire days. An AI interviewer that actually understood what he was preparing for, and where everything lived in one place.

I brought that idea to him. He listened, acknowledged it, but then brushed it off. He didn't have the bandwidth to think about building anything new, and honestly, I wasn't surprised.

Then came super day—the final round at one of the most competitive firms. We were hopeful. All he had to do was get through one more set of interviews that would be given throughout the day. But minutes after finishing, Max told us he didn't feel great about how it went. Two weeks later, the rejection email came.

It wasn't that he didn't know the material—he did. The problem was confidence and communication: being able to explain his thinking clearly, under pressure, in a way that made sense and actually stood out to someone listening on the other side of the table. None of the tools he'd used were really built for that.

With that weighing on me, I went back to my life—college apps, figuring out my own path—but I kept turning the idea over in my head. What would this thing actually look like? What features would matter? How could it fit into someone's day without taking it over? If we ever built it, I wanted it to be more than just another prep site—I wanted the whole vision thought through.

Then one afternoon in September, Max called me on his way home from work. He'd started building a mental-math app called Qalc and wanted to know more about the AI-interviewer idea from the summer. By then, I had a clear picture in my head: the core features, how the sessions should feel, and even how it could grow over time. When we decided to work on it together, he could dive straight into the code while I focused on shaping the product, the user experience, and where it could go next.

That's when it clicked for both of us. Max brought the technical ability, the builder mindset, the systems thinking. Leo brought the ideas, the vision, the outside instinct for what people actually need.

In the development process, we would often disagree. Max would see the beauty or the complexity in the code of a feature which just wasn't right, which Leo noticed. Working together, Leo was able to look at things from an outside perspective—something that was important to make sure we were building what students actually needed, not just what was technically impressive.

Our combined ideas became what is now Sharpe—named after the Sharpe ratio—because the mission is simple: help students get the most out of every minute they spend preparing. Not locking themselves inside for hours with tools that don't work. Just efficient, convenient practice you can pick up anywhere and actually build confidence.

It started with Leo watching Max grind through a process that shouldn't have been that painful and complex. And in trying to solve a problem for him, we ended up building something that solves a problem for a lot of other students too—something practical, something they can actually use, and something that finally makes the time they put in worth it.

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