Bio

An intro from the 2022 XTC startup challenge summarised my achievements well: ''Ahren was awarded the Investec Entrepreneur Leader of the year award (2016). He was also selected to present at the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange) on breaking the walls of code and poverty in South Africa. In 2020 He was voted in the Mail & Guardian's top 200 Young South Africans as the Editor's Choice for Innovation. In 2021 was awarded the GQ Man of the year for innovation and is now focusing his full efforts on creating global impact through blockchain and Web3.0 technology.'' I was born in a small town, as a young child raised by a single mother of 3, I found myself with the desire to provide for my family and an entrepreneurial streak was born. I sold items throughout my schooling career, from sweets to guns! (toy guns) I tended to challenge the rules where they made no sense and championed logic, I became Head-boy and was voted ''Most Likely to succeed in business''. I finished my High School career with a distinction in business and the second highest grade for programming. After a year in the real world, working retail and cycling 44 km a day to get to and from work; I began tertiary education at the University of Cape Town, specializing in Business and Computer Science. In my extracurriculars I held the positions of Media Marketing Head, as well as Treasurer and Chairperson in various clubs, learning valuable lessons leading an organisation. I Co-Developed and built the app 'Lockdown Bozza' in 4 days which scaled rapidly, servicing over 1.5 Million South Africans within the first 72h of launch and over 8 Million since (~20% of South Africa's adult population). I have studied my Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Advanced Cryptography and Advanced Cyber Threat Intelligence certifications. I have founded multiple companies including; a small tech-import business, a non-profit aimed at providing software development skills to underprivileged children, an Ed-Tech platform called 'Jobmatcher' as well as a calendly competitor, 'Project Kooda'. Most recently I co-founded Africa's #1 Web3 marketplace; Momint. With regards to programming proficiency; I am proficient in Solidity, Java, Python, Bash, Powershell, C++, C#, Swift, Ruby, React, HTML5, CSS, SASS, PHP, Node.js, Angular.js, Typescript and JavaScript. I have built and scaled production web, mobile and desktop applications. I have experience securing Azure Cloud environments and occasionally experiment with raspberry-pi and arduino projects.