Here’s why I, a 27 year old black man, left my $400,000/year fully remote job to become an influencer
First some self-congratulatory bullshit
Because the title of this article has an extraordinary claim, allow me to first provide some extraordinary evidence.
In January 2022, I joined Oscar Health as a full-time software engineer. This was when the job market was pretty good, and because of my skill as an engineer and the “name brand” of having an MS in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon, I was able to negotiate a much higher than average total compensation.
What does “higher than average” actually mean? Let’s break it down.
Offer letter from Oscar HealthThe offer letter details:
- The starting salary for the position ($145,000/year)
- The performance bonus of 10% ($14,500/year)
- The restricted stock units or RSUs ($45,000/year)
- A sign-on bonus ($10,000)
I’m no mathematician, but I’m pretty sure that adds up to $214,500. Not bad for a 24 year old.
But it got even better.
Due to exceptional performance, I was promoted to Software Engineer II within one year at the company.
My promotion letter from Oscar HealthThis promotion came with a significant increase in compensation. My base salary increased to $159,500 and my annual bonus increased to $23,925. I also got a refresher of $67,500 (across 3 years) .
Literal surgeon salary.
The following year was uneventful. My base salary increased to $165,800. I received yet another refresher (like every other engineer at the company) and my bonus naturally increased because it’s weighted at 15% of my salary.
So in total:
- I had 6,347 shares of OSCR (initially) + 4,937 shares (after the first refresher) and 1,599 shares (after the second refresher). All together, that equaled 12,883 shares/year
- At a peak price of $22.93/share, that equaled to $295,484/year of equity
- My salary was $165,800 and I had a 15% annual bonus ($24,870/year)
With all of this, my compensation peaked at an unbelievable $486,154/year.
But that’s the peak price, which is misleading. If we take the average price of Oscar Health in 2024 ($16.57), that’s still $404,293/year.
Asking the NexusTrade AI for the average price of Oscar HealthAnd I gave ALL of that away…. to make videos of me lip syncing on TikTok.
Why would I leave tech to be an influencer?
Don’t get me wrong — at heart I’m still a tech guy — a software engineer. I’m just one with an insane plan….
To build my own marketing channel and unlock an infinite money glitch.
You see, for the past half a decade, I’ve been obsessively working on something that would convince even Tony Stark and Elon Musk that I’m the bigger visionary — a new type of investing platform.
But before I talk about the platform, let me explain the “influencer” jab I made at the beginning.
An unusual approach to marketing
As a tech guy who built a B2C SaaS company, I struggled with marketing for a while. At first, I just wrote Medium articles and saw a fair amount of success, achieving over 275K views on my articles at my peak in January, and over 145K views in the past month.
My Medium views in January 2025But this wasn’t enough. I wanted more.
I explored my options. I shit-post on Reddit, which works a little bit, but doesn’t give me that “viral” effect that I believe my app deserves. I’ve also tried doing some UGC marketing, but that was expensive and didn’t really achieve the results I wanted.
I ended up realizing that if I wanted to grow my app at the speed I wanted, I would have to do one of three things:
- Spend a metric fuckton of money on advertisements
- Spend a metric fuckton of money on bigger influencers for the privilege of an 8 second story post
- Become an influencer
I’m a smart guy. I went to Cornell and Carnegie Mellon. I’ve built an app that nobody thought was possible.
Thus, if I can literally achieve the impossible, how hard can it really be to become an influencer?
So that’s what I’m doing now. While I’m technically a founder or an entreprenuer or a software engineer, I now fully identify as an influencer.
And what exactly will I be “influencing”? I will be fixing the broken retail trading system.
Want to follow my social media accounts? Follow my TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube here!
The Problem of Retail Investing
Right now, almost every single retail investor is a degenerate gambler. They don’t even hide it.
- They maybe know the phrase “DYOR” but don’t know how to actually do their own research in practice
- They might build trading plans, but they always crumble in the face of fear and uncertainty
- And, they’re obsessed with getting rich quick, but don’t even know how to build a sensible (high-risk) plan. Instead, they gamble based on 0 DTE SPY calls
Above all, retail investors just truly don’t understand what it means to build a trading strategy.
So I built a web app to fix this.
An AI Approach to the stock market
I built NexusTrade, an AI-Powered trading platform that lets retail investors create, test, optimize, and deploy algorithmic trading strategies.
It’s basically a website that solves the retail trading problem with the help of AI.
And I know that if you’re in tech, you visibly cringed when I said the letters “A” and “I”. You’re sick of this by now. But unlike Silicon Valley’s darling companies, this app actually solves real problems.
This is demonstrated by the reviews of people that have used it.
The institutional investors that have used NexusTrade
For example, take the opinion of Jeffery Fan.
A Google Calendar Invite between me and JefferyI had an exciting opportunity to talk with Jeff and give him a personalized demo of the platform. Jeffrey works at Scotiabank, the third largest bank in Canada.
And when I say “works there”, he’s not like a janitor or a lowly intern. He has over 3 decades of experience and is the Managing Director & Global Head of Equity Research.
I showed him all of NexusTrade’s features, tips, and tricks, and he was beyond impressed. He outright could not believe that a single person was capable of building something so extraordinary. If the Google Meet transcript was recorded, I’d be blasting that everywhere too.
As if one institutional investor isn’t enough, I actually have another.
Take Spencer Kalish.
A review of NexusTrade from Spencer K Spencer works as the Global Chief of Staff at UBS, one of the world‘s largest financial institutions.
Spencer didn’t just think NexusTrade was cool, he was genuinely shocked at the comprehensiveness of the platform.
Because of his reaction, I mustered up the courage to ask him to let me write a review of the platform to increase my credibility. Everyone claims to have the best trading platform in the world, but how many people have real institutional investors backing up those words?
He happily obliged.
But that’s not all. He also set me up with another meeting to have yet another demo… This time with Jamshed Cooper, the Managing Director of the Non-Core and Legacy Technology Division at UBS.
A meeting with me, Spender, and the managing director at UBS on May 8thDuring that meeting, we’re going to have a technical chat about how NexusTrade works under the hood. Something I’m super excited to nerd out about.
And, while the opinions of these individuals do NOT represent an official position from the banks (but rather personal opinions from the individuals within their institutions), the fact that these people genuinely think that the platform I spent so long building was genuinely cool makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
But it’s not just the big banks that have a positive opinion of Nexus.
More than 20,000 other folks do too.
Not just for institutions
In addition to the opinion of these institutional investors, NexusTrade is enjoyed by over 23,500 users.
A graph showing NexusTrade growth over timeUsers of all backgrounds and experience levels are enjoying it, from ordinary middle school teachers to senior lecturers at Harvard Business School.
A list of reviews for the NexusTrade platformWhat about NexusTrade makes it so useful for retail investors?
The reason why people of all experience levels enjoy the platform is that it is literally built to be a Wall Street-grade platform with the ease of use and simplicity of Robinhood.
Algorithmic trading is inherently difficult, so it’s still not meant for everybody. Nonetheless, for the savvy investor, this platform LITERALLY teaches you how to become a systematic algorithmic trader. For example:
If you want to have a deep dive into NexusTrade’s AI features, check out the rest of the articles on my Medium! For example, this article below does a great job at describing how NexusTrade can be done to perform financial research and deploy algorithmic trading strategies.
Concluding Thoughts
Leaving behind a $400,000 salary was undoubtedly the biggest financial risk I’ve ever taken, but I believe the potential reward of building NexusTrade into a revolutionary platform for retail investors justifies this leap of faith.
The positive feedback from institutional investors and our growing user base of over 23,500 people confirms that I’m addressing a genuine need in the market.
Becoming an influencer might seem like an unusual path for someone with my technical background, but it’s simply the most effective way to reach the people who need this platform most. The journey from software engineer to founder to content creator has taught me that sometimes the most unconventional routes lead to the greatest innovations.
Want to follow my social media accounts? They are all linked to my NexusTrade profile here. Sign up with my referral code, join 23,000+ traders, AND get 100 research tokens for absolutely free!
