I'm Trey White. I live in San Diego, where I try to catch some waves in between building stuff I think is cool.

I've loved making things for as long as I can remember. I think most people my age spent many of their formative years attending the LEGO school of construction.

As I grew out of childhood and playing with blocks, I fell in love with technology. Honestly, it's a lot like construction except my supplies are infinite and my crane, hammer, etc. is a keyboard on a laptop that I can take with me anywhere.

I was lucky enough to attend a high school with a speciality center for information technology where I fell deeper into technology's grip as I started programming. I continued this throughout my college years at Virginia Tech.

After college, I went to Washington, DC to work for Deloitte Consulting where I had a nice variation in types of projects and experiences. The nature of consulting was great in terms of exposure to different organizations and styles of work, but tended to be slower than I prefered, filled with governmental red tape, and higher ups trying harder to sell work than to solve problems.

So when my girlfriend at the time, now wife, decided to travel nurse. I saw it as an opportunity to make a 180.

I had been attending real estate investment masterminds with my dad for a few years at this point and, it was obvious to me that, there was a need for software to save these investors. They had no idea where to begin with organizing, tracking, and managing their investment portfolios.

This seemed like an opportunity to help people with the skills I had and none of the slow-pace and red tape of my job at the time. My girlfiend and I soon left for Nashville, TN where she would start her journey as a travel nurse and I would create my company, RealNumberz, with my dad as the idea guy and myself as the tech nerd.

Starting a new company with absolutely zero-guidance is a daunting but exciting experience. I loved designing and building the product itself, but my original assumption that users would come running to me waving money in my face and asking to pay me... turned out wasn't exactly correct.

To address this, I dove into learning all things business and we made changes to the marketing and sales aspects. People began using and paying for the app. It was an amazing feeling, but great feelings don't pay the rent, and working in a team of one gets lonely.

As my girlfriend's nursing contract in Nashville was expiring she signed a new contract in Seattle, WA. I decided to interview with some big tech companies. I knew what I wanted to do at this point, and I wanted to do it with the smartest people to learn from them and build better products.

I began working for Microsoft which was great. Even through COVID and riots in Seattle, I loved my life (for a multitude of reasons). I did this for two years until my manager wanted me to come back into the office. This was at the same time that my girlfriend had started a new nursing contract in San Diego, CA.

We had fallen in love with San Diego. Our dog had fallen in love with the beach. I couldn't go back.

I left Microsoft and began working for Google. I've been there ever since. It's been an amazing experience, and I'm happier than I've ever been. I'll talk your ear off about it and annoy the heck out of you, if you want me to.

Oh, and the cherry on top: my dad and I rebranded the company I started in Nashville from RealNumberz to REI Copilot, and it's now running itself with the user base growing and helping more people than ever.