Skip to content
Tan Yong Hong · Software & AI Engineer

I'm Yong, a 23-year-old engineer from Singapore. I taught myself to ship, founded Crystara, and now build autonomous agents at True North and Kavela.

Currently · AI Engineer @ True North · Building Kavela · NUS CS Y2
00Who
Drop portrait here
Based in
Singapore
Studying
Computer Science, NUS (Y2)
Working on
AI agents @ True North · Kavela
Focus
AI systems · Full-stack · Blockchain

I've been shipping software since I was fifteen, long before anyone paid me to. That head start is the whole story.

At fifteen, I ran a Minecraft server that peaked at 250 players. Through a game-development diploma and two years of National Service, I turned downtime into twelve-hour coding days, teaching myself web development, e-commerce, and blockchain from scratch.

That compounded fast. In early 2025 I built Crystara, the first NFT marketplace on Supra, took first place at its hackathon, and raised a six-figure round. Today, at 23, I'm an AI engineer at True North, building Kavela, and studying Computer Science at NUS.

The throughline: I don't wait for permission to build. I find the frontier, teach myself what it takes, and ship something real.

01The path

From a bedroom server to the AI frontier.

Seven chapters, one obsession: building things that are real.

  1. 2018 · Age 15Chapter 01 · The first server

    A Minecraft server, and 250 players

    It started with a world I could host myself. I built and ran a Minecraft server from age fifteen and grew it to a peak of 250 concurrent players, teaching myself systems administration, community, and shipping software people actually used, years before it was a job.

    250peak concurrent players
  2. 2019 to 2022Chapter 02 · Learning to make

    Game Development at Nanyang Polytechnic

    After secondary school I spent three years on a Diploma in Game Development at Nanyang Polytechnic, where designing systems for play sharpened the instinct for interaction, feel, and craft that shows up in everything I build now.

  3. 2022 to 2024Chapter 03 · The self-taught years

    National Service, and twelve-hour coding days

    I served two years of National Service in Singapore as a security trooper. The downtime became a forge. I taught myself to build, full days of sometimes twelve hours of coding: websites, e-commerce, and eventually blockchain development on Supra, a Move-based chain. Discipline in, obsession out.

  4. Jan 2025Chapter 04 · Shipping for real

    Crystara, first NFT marketplace on Supra

    Everything I'd taught myself compounded into Crystara: the first NFT marketplace on Supra, with provably-fair blind-box mints powered by on-chain randomness. I built it end-to-end, won first place at the Supra SuperMovers hackathon, and raised a six-figure round.

    1stplace · Supra hackathon
  5. 2024 to presentChapter 05 · The foundations

    Computer Science at NUS

    I'm now a Year 2 Computer Science student at the National University of Singapore, pairing the theory with the years of building that came before it.

  6. Nov 2025Chapter 06 · Into the AI era

    AI Engineer at True North

    I joined True North, a Singapore AI startup building the world's first agentic brokerage, as an AI Engineer, bringing autonomous agents into a domain where correctness and latency are everything.

  7. Feb 2026Chapter 07 · Now

    Building Kavela

    Now I'm building Kavela, a cloud platform that turns a described outcome into a production-grade AI agent. The throughline from a Minecraft server at fifteen to here: build the thing, ship it, make it real.

02Selected work

Things I've built & shipped.

03By the numbers

8+ years of building, most of it before it was a job.

The habit started early and never stopped. A record of shipping real things, from a game server to production AI.

2018Building ever since2026
250Peak concurrent players, age 15
1stSupra SuperMovers hackathon
6-figRaised for Crystara
4+Products shipped end-to-end
04Interactive

Walk through my work as a little world.

A hand-built voxel island where every monument is a chapter. Click into Crystara, Kavela, True North and more. The whole journey, rendered in blocks.

Get in touch

Have something worth building?

I'm always up for ambitious problems in AI, systems, and product. Tell me what you're working on.