Now: building Unvibe & PitchNest · researching with Stanford Small Groups

Preston Susanto

I'm a founder

I build tools that help people actually understand the AI-written code they ship. EECS student at Diablo Valley College with a 4.0, transferring Fall 2027. Grew up across Indonesia, Australia and China. Now building in the Bay Area.

See my work Résumé

Pleasant Hill, CA Bay Area

Unvibe

PitchNest

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Unvibe PitchNest Regrade Reinforcement learning Full-stack engineering Developer tools Community building Bay Area Unvibe PitchNest Regrade Reinforcement learning Full-stack engineering Developer tools Community building Bay Area

3 startups built

5 hackathon awards

10 student organizations

4.0 GPA at Diablo Valley College

01 Now building

AI writes the code.
You should still understand it.

Unvibe

Private beta

A Mac and Windows desktop tool that explains AI-generated code right where it lives. Highlight anything, hit ⌘U and pick how deep you want to go. I solo-founded it in May 2026.

~20active private-beta users
50+developers giving direct product feedback
$230K+in credits from GitLab, Mixpanel, PostHog, AWS, Google Cloud & MongoDB
Claudefor Startups. Accepted into Anthropic's program

Credits & programs

What users taught me → Pointed criticism from beta users changed the roadmap. Unvibe is moving from a code explainer to a GitHub-connected engineering knowledge layer for AI-assisted teams.

Visit unvibe.site Investor page

Press · FounderMag · Jul 20, 2026 ↗

“Unvibe Launches a Desktop ‘Understanding Layer’ for AI-Written Code”

Writing · Publication

“The Hidden Cost of Vibe Coding — And How Unvibe Helps You Actually Own Your Codebase”

02 Co-founder · PitchNest

Practice the pitch
before the real one.

May 2026
Selected for iDICE Startup Bridge, Founders Lab Cohort 1: final 188 of 13,000+ applications
Aug 2026
Top 50 and Top 15 finalist, earning the $4,000 base grant
Sep 2026
Pitched into the Top 10, winning the $3,000 top-up grant
Oct 2026
Paid partnership with Akwa Ibom Tech Week

PitchNest

Live

An AI investor panel for founders that I co-founded. Pitch to it, and it listens, pushes back and debates your thesis, then gives you a structured readiness report before your next real meeting.

Top 10of 13,000+ applicants at iDICE Startup Bridge (Founders Lab, Cohort 1)
$7Kin grants: $4K base grant (Top 50) plus $3K top-up grant (Top 10)
$10Kin AWS credits through the programme's AWS partnership
PartnerPaid partnership with Akwa Ibom Tech Week

Visit pitchnest.app

03 Hackathons

Hackathon
wins.

Five awards across three hackathons in 2026, plus a top-1% finish in a 12,000-person online challenge.

Sortify, the app that won three awards at SF Hacks 2026

SF Hacks 2026 · San Francisco

3 awards at SF Hacks

Won three categories with Sortify, an AI waste-sorting app, in a field of about 500 hackers.

Best Beginner Hack
Best Hardware Hack
Best Use of Boxi AI

~500 participants

Sortify on GitHub ↗ Live site ↗

Mega Hackathon 2026 · Online

Best Gaming Hack

~900 online participants

Curtin University Gen AI Hackathon 2026

1st place

~200 participants

Gemini AI Live Agent Hackathon

Top 1% with Cauliform

12,000+ participants

Also competed

Los Altos Hacks 2026~400 hackers · ScholarisApp
AI Berkeley HackathonLifeTap
Hack Social 2026Participant

04 Selected work

Selected
projects

SF Hacks 2026 · 3 awards

Sortify

Scan any item and get recycle, compost or trash guidance. Won 3 awards at SF Hacks 2026.

Startup · Mar – Jul 2026

Regrade

AI grade-appeal app that reads your rubric and graded work, then drafts an evidence-based appeal.

Gemini Live Agent Hackathon

Cauliform

A voice agent that phones you and fills out real Google Forms through conversation.

Hardware · AI Berkeley Hackathon

LifeTap

A physical SOS button: one press, an 80 dB alarm, and live GPS sent over WhatsApp.

Co-founder · iDICE Top 10

PitchNest

An AI investor panel for practicing your pitch. Top 10 of 13,000+ applicants at iDICE, with $7K in grants.

Los Altos Hacks 2026 · ~400 hackers

ScholarisApp

Scholarship matching that replaces a dozen open tabs with one profile and one deadline list.

Chrome extension · Accessibility

Access for All

Readability and contrast tools for color blindness and dyslexia, built in under 48 hours.

05 Research

Reinforcement learning
on a single laptop.

In progress · targeting arXiv + Journal of Student Research

Reward Shaping for Accessible AI Tutoring in Community Colleges

Independent researcher · Advisor: Prof. Kyu Woong Lee · Diablo Valley College · Jan 2026 – present

Can a rolling window of temporal-difference error act as a dynamic potential function, speeding up Q-learning in sparse-reward environments without a GPU or cloud budget? The motivation is real: tutoring agents that adapt to students without needing institutional compute.

Seeds: 5
Window sizes: 4
Environment: FrozenLake-v1
GPUs used: 0

Python · Gymnasium · NumPy · SciPy · Matplotlib

Read the paper

Also

Student Researcher, Stanford Small Groups · Sep 2026 – present

Try it · live in your browser

Watch an agent learn FrozenLake

Reward shaping

Episodes0

Success · last 500%

First solved at—

Simplified demo: tabular Q-learning on a 4×4 lake, with potential-based shaping on distance to the goal. Toggle shaping and reset to compare. The paper studies a different, adaptive TD-error potential.

06 Experience

Experience

Jun – Aug 2026 Lead AI Systems Architect Parinama Group

Architected automation and agentic AI / RAG pipelines across a four-vertical business group (driving, academy, consulting, operations), integrating WATI, Calendly and Astra AI.
Customer-support and website automations that served 300 customers.
Rebuilt additional company websites, roughly doubling design quality and usability over the originals.

Agentic AIRAGWATICalendlyAstra AI

parinamagroupofcompanies.com ↗

Jun 2025 – Jul 2026 Senior Web Application Developer Wosado Australia

Built and maintained the e-commerce site for an Australian beauty brand: product pages, purchasing flow, UX and backend operations.
Supported $7K+ in sales.

ShopifyE-commerce UXOperations

wosadoaustralia.com.au ↗

Jun 2025 – Now Web Application Developer Aiko Matcha

Built and maintain the e-commerce site for a small Australian matcha business.
Contributed to thousands of dollars in sales through sales-flow optimization and logistics coordination.

Wix StudioWeb designConversion

aikomatcha.com ↗

Sep 2026 – Now Student Founder Founders School

Student founder in the San Francisco Bay Area cohort, building Unvibe alongside other early-stage founders.

Aug 2026 – Now College Ambassador Backboard.io

Selected as one of 25 campus ambassadors nationwide. I lead outreach and community engagement.

Apr 2026 – Now Math Tutor DVC Tutoring Center

Supported 50+ students with math coursework and problem-solving strategy.
Completed MATH 140 Tutor Training with an A.

07 Leadership

Leadership

Clubs and organizations I help run, mostly at Diablo Valley College.

Sep 2025 – Now

President

Google Developer Group @ DVC

50+ active members

Rose from Software Engineer Officer to President; built a 16-person executive team.
Returning-member attendance up ~25% through structured project programming.
Shipped 5 club projects and ran an internal hackathon.

Club page ↗

May 2026 – Now

Vice President

DVC International Students Club

~70 per meeting

Built the sign-in and attendance system and event decks, making meetings ~50% more efficient to run.
Effectively ran club operations without an elected president.

Jun 2026 – Now

Vice President & CTO

Code the Change

20+ devs mentored

Led a nonprofit client's website build: an estimated 2× lift in online visibility and traffic.
Started as Project Leader (Sep – Dec 2025).

Code the Change ↗

Mar 2026 – Now

Promotion & Production

PERMIAS Nasional

500 orders nationwide

Merch design, vendor coordination and Instagram content for a 10K+ follower national Indonesian student org.
Graduation merch logistics across the US, $1K+ in transactions.

Sep 2025 – Now

Executive Secretary · Webmaster

Alpha Gamma Sigma, Gamma Psi

109+ honors students

Maintain the chapter website and run communications for the honor society.

Chapter site ↗

RJun 2026 – Now

Chief Technology Officer

Rotary International · DVC

Own the club's technology and digital infrastructure.

And also

Executive Treasurer, Science & Engineering Society prev. Computer Engineer Officer
Executive Tech & Outreach / ICC Rep, Inter-Club Council SNES · Omega Leo · CryptoAcademy
Engagement Coordinator, Toastmasters International
Event Organizer Officer, Indo DVC

Preston walking across the Golden Gate Bridge

08 The road here

I didn't come to California
for an easy path.

2015 – 2021

Jakarta, Indonesia

Grew up bilingual and went to SMAK 5 Penabur Kelapa Gading. Built my first websites at 13, an HTML/CSS/JS habit that never stopped.

2021 – 2024

Perth, Australia

Wesley College, ranked the #1 private high school in Australia (Schools360, 2026). Computer Science Prize, #1 of 110. Co-founded the Wesley Coding Club. Captained soccer, volleyball and basketball teams. Earned a taekwondo blue belt.

Feb – Jul 2025

Rural China

A residential immersion at Wen Dao Xue Xiao: 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. days farming potatoes, rice, carrots and strawberries, laying bricks, and studying Chinese, tai chi, wushu and traditional Chinese medicine, with almost no modern comforts.

Aug 2025 – Now

San Francisco Bay Area

Moved here alone to study EECS at Diablo Valley College. 4.0 GPA, RL research, a startup, and a lot of campus leadership. Transfer targets: UC Berkeley, Stanford and Princeton, Fall 2027.

09 Recognition

Academic honors

2025 Diablo Valley College 4.0 GPA · Phillip Howe Scholarship · Manuel Gonzales Merit Scholarship
2024 Wesley College Computer Science Prize · Academic Excellence · Gold Endeavour · Duke of Edinburgh Bronze

Certifications

Stanford (Coursera) Supervised ML: Regression & Classification · Advanced Learning Algorithms
Anthropic Claude Code in Action
Hugging Face AI Agents Fundamentals
Google Intro to Generative AI · Intro to LLMs & Responsible AI · Building with AI Studio
Great Learning Vibe Coding with AI Tools · Cursor AI
Digital Workforce Understanding Agentic AI
Alison Basics of Prompt Engineering