Welcome to my professional life! Let's start from the beginning.I started my professional career by working as a journalist, starting in high school. I got a full scholarship to pursue my Bachelor's in Quantitative Financial Economics from the University of Rochester, New York. There I worked as a Digital Media Specialist for a computer lab to make ends meet. Technically, I should have pursued Investment Banking as a career post college but it didn't vibe with me. Econ introduced me to the world of cause and effect and systems thinking. Came back to India, travelled around with a backpack before deciding to work for Ketto, a cool crowdfunding platform. Worked there for a year and decided I wanted to write a book on crowdfunding. A year later, I was a published author, covered by the likes of BBC, The Hindu, Economic Times, etc. The research I did for the book taught me about network effects. Launched a boutique consulting firm called Project Nile in 2021. Got to work with some mega conglomerates, a unicorn and a bunch of nonprofits. Fun fact: our case study was presented at the G20 Youth Summit in Indonesia. I realized two things: consulting business is hard to scale and that I wanted to work at the intersection of social impact and tech. It was also the time when I started pursuing AI as an area of interest. In 2022, I launched CrowdHive, a reward-based crowdfunding platform. We saw good initial traction but the idea didn't take off coz we couldn't find the right product market fit. I learned that I should only build something if I know who would be my ideal customer. Took a job as a Fundraising Manager at Bhumi in Aug 22, where I got the freedom to pursue a lot of cool stuff. I founded B-SIF (Bhumi Social Impact Fundraising Program), conducted workshops for 800+ NGOs, built a DMS platform, doubled the individual giving fundraising volumes for Bhumi, built their CSR & Foundation data pipelines, and helped upskill 1000s of volunteers. That was during the day. During the night I was building DaanVeda with Tushar, whom I met at Bhumi.Tushar and I registered DaanVeda as a startup in May 2024 after working part-time on it for close to a year. DaanVeda is an AI-powered fundraising intelligence, automation, and payments platform for nonprofits. Our aim is to democratize fundraising for the social sector! Yup, that's the journey so far. <3DaanVeda: https://www.daanveda.comProject Nile: https://projectnile.in/CrowdHive: https://www.crowdhive.inMy Book: Link: https://www.amazon.in/Crowdfunding-Story-People-Irfan-Bashir/dp/B08PD9D1MR/)