January 10, 2026 · Personal · 2 min read
From FRC to Startups
How building competition robots with Team 254 shaped the way I approach product development.
I joined FRC Team 254 — The Cheesy Poofs — not knowing what I was getting into. What I found was a team that operates less like a high school club and more like a startup with a six-week sprint cycle.
The 254 Approach
Every January, a new game is revealed. You have six weeks to design, build, program, and test a 120-pound robot that can compete at the highest level. There's no room for scope creep, no time for perfect — you ship what works.
This forced prioritization is the most valuable skill I took from FRC. When you have limited time and resources, you learn to identify the 20% of features that deliver 80% of the competitive advantage, and you execute on those relentlessly.
Applying It to Products
ChargerTools operates on the same principle. The AR glasses don't try to compete with Apple Vision Pro — they solve a specific problem (hands-free computing with text input) in the simplest way possible. ChargerAgent doesn't try to be a full IDE — it's a lightweight tool that's always one click away.
Every product starts with the question: what's the minimum version of this that's genuinely useful? Build that first. Everything else is iteration.
The Technical Foundation
FRC also gave me a foundation in systems thinking. A competition robot is a system — mechanical, electrical, and software components that all need to work together under stress. That same thinking applies to building products that combine hardware and software, like the AR glasses.
You learn that the interface between systems is where things break. The Bluetooth connection between the glove and the phone. The optical alignment between the display and the lens. The API boundary between the AI model and the UI. Focus on the interfaces, and the components take care of themselves.