Vivek Khimani

I've always liked taking complicated things apart and figuring out what they're really made of.

Math was probably where I first found that instinct. What I liked was that complicated ideas could often be built from a small set of primitives. Understand those pieces deeply, understand the rules connecting them, and you could build from there.

That's probably why I ended up in computer science. Software felt like another version of the same exercise: understand the pieces, understand how they fit together, and build something more complicated from them.

I also grew up watching my dad run a small agricultural business. Its economics were fairly intuitive: more people, more land, more resources, more output. Software had a completely different kind of leverage. You could build something once and have it quietly do useful work for thousands of people. I've always been interested in what happens when that kind of leverage gets applied to industries that don't look much like software.

I notice the same instinct when I play sport. I grew up playing competitive squash, and these days I play tennis and run. When something isn't working, I tend to break it down: footwork, timing, balance, contact. You isolate a movement, repeat it, notice when something feels off, and try again. Eventually you do it enough that you stop thinking about the individual pieces.

Outside of work and sport, I like traveling on my own, reading, and playing guitar. I like being somewhere unfamiliar and figuring things out as I go. I also like having a few things in my life that don't need to lead anywhere.