Skip to main content

2025-11-09-exa-developer-relations-three-questions

Thursday, November 7th, 2025

Exa Application - Three Questions​

Why are you interested in working at Exa?​

I'm obsessed with how AI applications discover knowledge. I recently graduated top of my class from Gauntlet AI and immediately saw how constrained AI apps are by poor search infrastructure.

I love that Exa is building the search engine that actually serves AI applications from scratch—massive-scale crawling, state-of-the-art embeddings, high-performance vector databases.

I want to help developers understand what's possible when search actually works. I've built demos, grown developer communities, and created documentation that developers actually use.

Exa needs someone who can translate your technical breakthroughs into experiences that make developers say "holy shit, I need this." That's me.

What's something you worked on that you were proud of?​

Edge City Denver 2024 — a seven-day developer experience alongside ETHDenver that drew 3,000+ attendees and became the talk of the town.

I was the lead organizer. Here's what made it work:

Viral from the start: Our Telegram channel became THE nerve center of the entire ETHDenver conference within days. I designed programming that bridged crypto, AI, and biotech developers in ways no one expected.

Developer-first everything: I created documentation and guides that made navigating a complex multi-venue event feel effortless. Post-event survey: 4.6/5 average satisfaction with most people giving perfect scores.

Community that actually cared: We sold $25K in tickets while competitors struggled to fill free events. People showed up because we built something that resonated with what developers actually wanted.

The pattern I'm proud of: I know how to make technical communities feel inevitable. I identify what developers need before they know they need it, then build the demos, docs, and experiences that make them believers.

Read more: https://www.garysheng.com/stories/zuzalu

What motivates you?​

I'm motivated by democratizing access to transformative technology. I wrote about this extensively here: https://substack.garysheng.com/p/looking-for-a-mission-to-pursue-try

Specifically for Exa: finding high-quality knowledge is fundamental to human flourishing. When AI applications can't find the right information, they can't serve people well. Bad search creates barriers. Great search removes them.

I've spent my career removing barriers:

What gets me up in the morning: the moment when someone realizes a tool like Exa fundamentally changes what they can build. That's when technology stops being intimidating and starts being empowering.

Exa is building infrastructure that will power the next generation of AI applications. I want to be the person who helps developers understand what that means and why it matters.