Roanin
Podkin

I grew up in Vacaville, California. I’ve always looked for a way to make a few extra dollars, whatever it takes.

My mom likes to tell a story from when I was about three. I stepped off a rock and fell, and it made me so mad that I climbed back up and stepped off again. Then again, nonstop. Not until I got it right once, but until I couldn’t get it wrong. I don’t remember it, but it’s a good testament to who I am.

Me as a kid with a golf bag. I’ve been playing since I was about this age.

Eagle Scout, with my parents.

My older brother Colby runs a fish farm in Washington. He’s been in aquaculture a long time, and he was the first entrepreneur I ever watched up close.

From the end of high school through college, we’d strategize together all the time. I spent a couple of summers up there working with him.

Being around the fish gave me an idea. Young fish die early at a high rate, and you can see trouble coming in how they behave. I called it Finsight: pattern recognition on video, through computer vision, to catch early signs of disease, stress, hunger or low oxygen before it spreads. It’s a project I still keep tabs on.

I studied economics at UC Santa Barbara, class of 2026. I took many different finance, business, entrepreneurship, and economic theory classes.

In fall 2024 I did a semester abroad in Madrid and used it to see as much of Europe as I could. It was eye-opening.

The plan had been to work with my brother after graduation. The summer before my last year, I decided to go a different direction first, and that one decision set up everything that came after.

The summer before my last year, I went to Asia alone for almost two months.

Taipei. First stop.

I did a lot of things I’d never done. Got PADI scuba certified. Went on some crazy side quests and met all kinds of people. Saw some of the most beautiful nature I’ve ever seen. Dove with whale sharks. Lived on a boat for four days. And a lot more.

Mostly, though, the trip was a chance to step back and ask: do I like who I’ve become, who do I want to be, and what do I really want? I still do that audit often.

Making friends in random places. Flores.

Under the sea.

I came back from Asia in the middle of the AI boom and saw it as the biggest opportunity out there.

So I went deep. An hour of videos a day at minimum, most days four or five. Then testing: giving the models real tasks, seeing how accurate they were, building agents, automating the easy work.

I started telling people about it. Then I started doing it for them, and got a business license as an AI consultant. The next island picks that up.

At the start of 2024, my sophomore year, I took a job at La Cumbre Country Club in Santa Barbara as an outside service worker. Two reasons: to meet the members, and to play free golf.

The members were successful business owners, and over time a lot of them became mentors. We’d golf together. They’d talk to me about my career and my life. More than anything else, that’s how I got to where I am. It was through members at La Cumbre that I found out about Avoca.

In my last year the relationship changed. On November 20, 2025, I presented to the whole La Cumbre team on bringing AI into the club. Afterwards I signed a contract to do the work, and completed it.

Around the same time I worked with other small businesses: invoicing automations, knowledge-search agents, automated reporting, and much more. The most useful thing I did was sit down with owners one-on-one and teach them.

My mentors told me to get real industry experience. One thing I try to do is follow good leaders, and I found them at Avoca.

Avoca is the agentic layer that runs the front office for home-service businesses. It answers the calls, texts and chats a busy shop would otherwise miss, and books the job straight into the CRM. I think it solves a real problem better than anything else out there right now.

I joined the sales development team in Santa Barbara in July 2026. In September I was the number one rep in sales-qualified opps for the month.

If you run a home-service business, put some time on my calendar and I’ll show you what we do.

Mt Bierstadt

On August 28, 2026, I sat down with Dennis Yu in Broomfield, Colorado, and recorded what I called episode one. We were there because Jason Amato had put a workshop together for home-service operators. By the end of it, seven of them had booked a demo. The next morning we hiked Mt Bierstadt, 14,065 feet. That night Dennis and I talked at Denver airport until my 7:20 flight.

Shaka Spice

My mom had a seasoning blend recipe that was too good to stay in the kitchen, so I made it a business. I bought the ingredients, mixed it, bottled it under the Shaka Spice label and sold it at tables and by word of mouth. It was good. It just wasn’t as good as the other things I was working on at the time, so I let it go.

Shaka Spice.

Teyuna

Right after graduation, before Avoca started, I went to Colombia and did the four-day hike through the jungle to Teyuna, the Lost City.

Teyuna.

Europe

During the Madrid semester in fall 2024 I got to as many countries as I could. This is Switzerland.

Climbing mountains.