About Zeeshan
I have been building with AI for more than ten years, long before ChatGPT made it part of everyday conversation. I started by building machine-learning models and the products around them. Since then, I have co-founded several software companies and been through two exits. I have also mentored founders through Techstars and Founder Institute.
I am drawn to problems that look simple from a distance and become more interesting as you get closer. The answer is rarely just a better model or a new piece of software. I try to understand the data, decisions, tools, and people around the problem, then build what the situation actually needs.
I am not attached to one market or product category. I follow problems that are important, poorly understood, and newly solvable. The industry can change, but my way of working stays the same. I get close to the problem, question the obvious answer, build quickly, put it into use, and pay attention to what happens.
I build companies because it is the most honest way I know to test an idea. A product has to work for people who do not share my assumptions. A company has to earn trust, survive constraints, and keep learning. If the evidence changes the plan, I change the plan.
The part I enjoy most is the beginning, when the problem is still messy and nobody has a clean answer. Some ideas become companies. Some become research. Others stay private until there is something worth saying. I think we are still early, and that is what keeps me building.
Companies
These are the companies I have built and continue to build.
WayBreak
Present
Founder
I am building WayBreak in private. I am not describing the work publicly yet. I will share more when there is something useful to show.
Rifty
Present
Founder
I founded Rifty as an independent research lab for studying agents, adaptive systems, and the forms of software developing around them. I use it to explore how AI can learn through use, act over time, and adapt to the people and organizations it serves. The questions come from systems doing real work, where information is incomplete, priorities change, and there is rarely one correct answer.
Ownerized
Present
Founder
I started Ownerized as a Rifty experiment in pushing AI beyond isolated tasks and into the connected operation of a company. I want to see what changes when AI is designed into the whole operation from the beginning instead of added to one workflow at a time. The experiment is meant to stretch what these systems can understand, coordinate, and carry forward on their own.
Searcle
2026
Cofounder
I co-founded Searcle to understand how AI is changing the internet and the way people search, evaluate, and choose. We looked at what companies need to publish, how they prove what is true, and how they earn a place in an answer generated by a model rather than a list of links.
Litespace
2023 - 2025
Cofounder
I co-founded Litespace to understand the organization as a system. We connected the internal tools where work happened, brought fragmented data together, and used AI to understand how work moved through teams. That made it possible to measure productivity, uncover bottlenecks, and support decisions across team management, work management, and recruitment in large organizations. We were asking whether an organization could understand its own operating patterns well enough to improve them without reducing work to a dashboard of activity.
FutureFit AI
2017 - 2023
Cofounder
I co-founded FutureFit AI before ChatGPT, when applied AI meant building the machine-learning models as well as the product around them. We connected skills, labour-market data, career pathways, learning, and job opportunities. The systems we built have helped hundreds of thousands of people navigate career change. They also helped governments understand the labour markets in their regions: where skills existed, where demand was growing, and how people could move toward better work. The harder problem was serving both levels at once, giving one person a path that felt specific to them while helping a government see and plan for the workforce as a whole.