Jean Pierrevan Driel.

I grew up in Peru and moved to the Netherlands to study law — until I started building GPT pipelines to help write my essays, before ChatGPT existed. That curiosity changed everything. I did a data science bootcamp at Le Wagon, then launched my first startup: AICOS, an AI customer service tool for hotels in Peru that signed its first paying clients. Back in the Netherlands I took on freelance web work, won a hackathon building an ADHD reading extension (€500, first place), and enrolled in ICT at Fontys University. Five years of building — first out of curiosity, then professionally, now as a student who keeps shipping on the side.

AI interests me because it removes barriers. Tasks that used to require hours of searching can now be handled — and automated — in plain English. I don't think of AI as a feature you bolt onto an app; I think of it as the layer that makes the whole thing work differently. That said, I build just as comfortably without it: my foundations are in UI/UX design and data science — cleaning pipelines, preprocessing, training ML and DL models, the full arc from messy data to polished interface.

Outside of code I play tennis, train jiu jitsu, hike when I can, and think a lot about wine — specifically the growing and making of it. Jiu jitsu especially makes sense to me as a developer: it's problem solving under physical stress, where the solution has to be found in real time with incomplete information.

My bigger goal is to build my own startup. Right now I'm looking for an internship at a small team — somewhere I can contribute to everything, learn fast, and understand what it actually takes to ship something people use. If that sounds like your company, I'd love to talk.