How this founder’s unlikely path to Silicon Valley may grow to be an edge in industrial tech

[ad_1] Thomas Lee Younger doesn’t sound like your typical Silicon Valley founder.

The 24-year-old CEO of Interface, a San Francisco startup utilizing AI to stop industrial accidents, is a white man with a Caribbean accent and a Chinese language final identify, a mixture he finds amusing sufficient to say when he’s first launched to enterprise contacts. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, the positioning of considerable oil and gasoline exploration exercise, Younger grew up round oil rigs and vitality infrastructure as a result of his complete household labored as engineers, stretching again generations to his great-grandfather, who immigrated to the island nation from China.

That background has grow to be his calling card in pitch conferences with oil and gasoline executives immediately, nevertheless it makes for greater than an awesome dialog starter; it underscores a path that has been something however easy and that Younger would possibly argue provides Interface an edge.

It was years within the making. From age 11, Younger fixated on Caltech with the depth of somebody a lot older. He watched exhibits about Silicon Valley on-line, mesmerized by the concept that folks may construct “something and the whole lot” in America. He did the whole lot doable to safe admission, even writing his software essay about hijacking his household’s Roomba to create 3D spatial maps of his home.

The ploy labored – Caltech accepted him in 2020 – however then COVID-19 hit, and so did its ripple results. For one factor, Younger’s visa scenario grew to become practically inconceivable (visa appointments have been cancelled and processing got here to a halt). On the identical time, his faculty fund, rigorously constructed over six or seven years to $350,000 to cowl his training, “principally acquired hit solely” by the abrupt market downturn in March of that yr.

With out plenty of time to determine his future, he selected a less expensive three-year engineering program on the College of Bristol within the UK, learning mechanical engineering, however by no means abandoning his Silicon Valley desires. “I used to be devastated,” he says, “however I noticed I may nonetheless get one thing carried out.”

At Bristol, Younger landed at Jaguar Land Rover, working in one thing referred to as human elements engineering – basically the UX and security design of business techniques. “I had by no means heard of it earlier than I even joined,” he admits. The function concerned determining learn how to make automobiles and manufacturing traces as protected as doable, making certain they have been “dummy proof” for clean operations.

Techcrunch occasion

San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026

It was there, inside heavy trade, that Younger noticed the issue that may grow to be Interface. He says the instruments many firms use to handle security documentation are both nonexistent – pen and paper – or so siloed and poorly designed that staff hate them. Worse, the working procedures themselves — the instruction manuals and checklists that blue-collar staff depend on to remain protected — are riddled with errors, outdated, and practically inconceivable to keep up.

Younger pitched Jaguar on letting him construct an answer, however the firm wasn’t . So he began plotting his exit. When he discovered about Entrepreneur First (EF), a European expertise incubator that recruits promising people earlier than they've a co-founder and even an concept, he chilly utilized regardless of its 1% acceptance fee. He was accepted to basically pitch himself.

He instructed Jaguar he was going to a marriage in Trinidad and can be away for every week. As an alternative, he went to EF’s choice course of, impressed the organizers, and the day he returned to the workplace, stop. “They realized, ‘Oh, so that you in all probability weren’t at a marriage,’” he laughs.

At EF, Younger met Aaryan Mehta, his future co-founder and CTO. Mehta, of Indian descent however born in Belgium, had his personal thwarted American dream. He’d been accepted to each Georgia Tech and Penn however equally couldn’t get a visa appointment throughout COVID. He ended up learning math and laptop science at Imperial School London, the place he developed AI for fault detection earlier than constructing machine studying pipelines at Amazon.

“We had related backgrounds,” Younger says. “He’s tremendous worldwide. He speaks 5 languages, very technical, wonderful man, and we acquired alongside very nicely.” Actually, they have been the one group of their EF cohort to not break up, says Younger.

Greater than that, immediately, they stay collectively in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, although requested about spending a lot time collectively, Younger is adamant that that’s not a problem given their respective workloads. “During the last week, I’ve seen [Aaryan] at residence for possibly a mixed complete of half-hour.”

As for what, precisely, they're constructing, Interface’s pitch is easy: use AI to make heavy trade safer. The corporate autonomously audits working procedures utilizing giant language fashions, cross-checking them towards rules, technical drawings, and company insurance policies to catch errors that would – in a worst-case situation – get staff killed.

Among the numbers are arresting. For one in every of Canada’s largest vitality firms, the place Interface is now deployed throughout three websites (Younger declines to call the model), Interface’s software program discovered 10,800 errors and enhancements throughout the corporate’s normal working procedures in simply two and a half months. As Younger tells it, the identical work carried out manually would have value greater than $35 million and brought two to a few years.

One error Younger discovered notably troubling, he says, was a doc that had been in circulation for 10 years with the unsuitable strain vary listed for a valve. “They’re simply fortunate that nothing occurred,” says Medha Agarwal, a associate at Defy.vc, which led Interface’s $3.5 million seed spherical earlier this yr, with participation from Precursor, Rockyard Ventures, and angel buyers, together with Charlie Songhurst.

The contracts are appreciable. After initially making an attempt outcome-based pricing (the vitality firm “hated it,” Younger says), Interface adopted a hybrid per-seat mannequin with overage prices. A single contract with the Canadian vitality firm is value greater than $2.5 million yearly, and Interface has extra gasoline and oil companies clients coming on-line in Houston, Guyana, and Brazil.

The overall addressable market isn’t solely clear, nevertheless it’s not small. Within the U.S. alone, there are one thing like 27,000 oil and gasoline companies firms, per the market analysis outfit IBISWorld, and that’s simply the primary vertical that Interface desires to sort out.

The outsider’s edge

Curiously, Younger’s age and background – issues that may look like disadvantages relating to extra established industries – have grow to be his secret weapons. When he walks right into a room of executives twice or thrice his age, he says, there’s preliminary skepticism. “Who the hell is that this younger man and the way does he know what he’s speaking about?”

However then, he says, he delivers his “wow second,” by explaining an understanding of their operations, their staff’ each day routines, and precisely how a lot money and time Interface can save them. “As soon as you may flip them, they'll completely love you and advocate and struggle for you,” he says. (He claims that after a latest, first web site go to with operators, 5 staff requested after they may spend money on Interface, which made him notably proud, given the sphere staff sometimes “hate software program suppliers.”)

Certainly, although Younger works from Interface’s workplace in San Francisco’s Monetary District, his arduous hat sits on a desk not removed from his desk, prepared for the following web site go to. (Agarwal suggests Younger may use a bit extra down time in his life, recalling a latest name the place Younger instructed her that he hadn’t seen the solar all day.)

The corporate now has eight staff – 5 within the workplace, three distant – principally engineering hires, plus an operations one that began simply this week. Interface’s greatest problem is hiring quick sufficient to maintain up with demand, an issue that requires its small group to faucet networks throughout each Europe and the US.

As for what Younger makes of the life in San Francisco he needed and is now residing, he marvels at how correct the Silicon Valley stereotypes turned out to be. “You see folks on-line speaking about, ‘Oh, you go to a park and the individual sitting subsequent to you has raised $50 million constructing some insane AI agent.’ However it's truly like that,” he says. “I feel again to what life was like in Trinidad. I point out these concepts to folks again residence, and so they simply don’t consider me.”

He often makes time to exit in nature with buddies – he says they went to Tahoe lately – and Interface hosts occasions like a hackathon they threw final weekend. However principally, it’s work, and most of that work entails AI, similar to everybody else’s in San Francisco proper now.

Which makes the journeys to grease rigs oddly interesting.

Certainly, that arduous hat on the workplace isn’t only a sensible necessity; it’s additionally a lure, suggests Younger. For engineers uninterested in constructing “some low-impact B2B gross sales or recruiting software,” as Younger places it, the promise of often leaving the Bay Space bubble to work with operators within the discipline has grow to be a recruiting benefit. Lower than 1% of San Francisco startups work in heavy trade, he notes, and that shortage is a part of the attraction, for him and for the folks he’s hiring.

It’s in all probability not fairly the model of the Silicon Valley dream he spent his childhood chasing from Trinidad: lengthy hours, intense strain, countless AI discussions in every single place, punctuated by the occasional journey to an oil rig.

Nonetheless, for now, he doesn’t appear to thoughts it. “During the last month or two months, I've not carried out a lot in any respect [outside the office], as a result of there’s simply been a lot depth right here, with constructing, hiring, promoting.” However “I really feel fairly sturdy,” he provides.