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now
Co-founder & CEO — Marketrix AI
San Francisco
Marketrix runs user studies and market research with AI personas, so you get real reactions and product feedback before you ship. It runs on Universal Simulation Intelligence. marketrix.ai
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now
Host — The Tesla Pod
San Francisco
First episode May 2026. Filmed in a self-driving Tesla around San Francisco. theteslapod.com
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the move
O-1A → EB-1A in 14 months
Sri Lanka → San Francisco
Most cases take years. I did mine while building Marketrix from nothing.
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before that
Founder & CEO — CreativeHub Global
Sri Lanka
Started in a garage with no funding. Grew it to 50 people and shipped 30+ products for clients around the world, then exited to work on AI full time. creativehub.global
Irosha de Silva
I'm the co-founder and CEO of Marketrix AI. We simulate your users before you have any. AI personas go through your product in a real browser and react like real people, so you find out what is broken before you launch instead of after.
Before this I started CreativeHub Global in a garage in Sri Lanka. I grew it to 50 people, shipped 30+ products for clients around the world, and exited. Then I moved to San Francisco on an O-1A and got an EB-1A 14 months later, while building Marketrix from zero.
I host The Tesla Pod, where I interview founders and engineers in a self-driving Tesla around San Francisco, and I write Brain Candy on Substack.
JOURNEY
THE TESLA POD
Founders, engineers and operators on what building in the AI era actually takes. Startups, YC, AI, product, growth, and where software goes next.
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MrBeast Meets Silicon Valley: Making Tech Fun Again
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Sequoia Said Yes. A Million Users Later, It's Still Free
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Fleek Raised $25M to Fix What Happens to Your Old Clothes
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He Left Google to Build Agent Swarms
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They're Automating the $1 Trillion Consulting Industry
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He Dropped Out of His PhD to Get Into YC
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Your Browser Is About to Drive Itself
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AI Just Ate Customer Success
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The $5 Trillion Problem Nobody in Tech Is Working On
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They Raised $500K from YC at 18
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Self-Driving Cars and Self-Driving Software
BRAIN CANDY
I write about simulation, AI personas, and where software goes next.
- Sep 3, 2026 Wtf is a persona? The most abused word in product work, and what it has to mean now that personas do things.
- Jul 29, 2026 The Year Simulation Became Measurable Synthetic user research went from promising to provable. Here's what changed.
- Jun 19, 2026 User research is dead. We just haven't held the funeral. We measure the wrong thing, too late for it to matter.
- Jun 5, 2026 How We Simulate Users: The Engine Behind Marketrix How our personas explore a product in a real browser and react like real users.
- Apr 13, 2026 Selenium Is Broken. But Fixing It Isn't the Point. QA is busy fixing test scripts. That's the wrong question.
- Mar 26, 2026 Your Next Customer Is Simulated The companies that win will test on AI personas before real people touch anything.
HOW I CAN HELP
Things I've done the hard way and am happy to talk about:
- Zero to one
- Getting your first customers with no money and no name.
- AI-native products
- Shipping AI people actually use. What to build, what to buy, what to skip.
- Scaling a team
- Going from a garage to 50 people without losing the ability to ship.
- O-1A and EB-1A
- What the founder route actually takes. I did mine in 14 months.