I'm Nick!

I first started this blog as a quick way to share what I've learned about personal finance with my college friends. We found that as we neared graduation, there were so many things that we were never taught in school…

…that really we should have been.

They weren't too complex of subjects either. Topics like How to Build a Basic Budget or How to Find the Best Roth 401(k) Provider seem so trivial now, but at the time it was so daunting.

The easiest way I found to kickstart how to learn anything is to talk about it with your friends.

Once I started to openly talk to my friends about these sorts of topics, it accelerated our ability to learn because it didn't feel like we were in it alone.

One of the first things I looked to tackle was my student loan debt. It totaled $25,000+ but I was super fortunate to drill it down quickly to around $18,000+ after a summer internship.

That's the point when I really considered my personal finance journey to begin.

And I noticed across my friends that is also where they started theirs – car loan payments, credit card debts, college loan debts, or sometimes a mixture of them all!

Here are my thoughts on why we were each able to get a hold of our finances:

1. We found resources or mentors that we could check in with and have transparent discussions with
2. Instead of ignoring our finances, we made a schedule to review the state of our money
3. We just got started, even if it was with a small step – the key was to start getting momentum

Learning about personal finances isn't hard, but don't get me wrong – it isn't easy either.

So here's my story – hopefully, it gives you an idea of my journey and the things that I've learned so far…

1992 – The Non-Existent Son For a Day

I was born on April 1, 1992, to a loving Chinese and Puerto Rican couple.

Yes…April Fool's Day.

A day that I am reminded of (or need to confirm) upon anyone new hearing of my birthdate.

There was a story that I remember being told by my father on the day of my birth, he had called his family with the excitement of his first son, "I've had a son!"

The response from his sister was nothing more than, "Haha, April Fools. I'm sure you did."

So in a way, I didn't exist for a day.

My father had to call his family on April 2nd to remind them – and really make sure they knew – that I was born the day prior.

My family was living at the time in a town named Palmdale, CA. It was still located in Los Angeles County, but WAY North of the actual city of Los Angeles.

Being a Southern California resident didn't last very long as my family made the move to the San Francisco Bay Area by the time I was three.

Shoutout to the 5-1-0!

The one thing that I remember the most growing up was opening a giant box set of cassettes and workbooks by Hooked on Phonics. I swear that those were the only things that consumed my free time for at least the next couple of years.

If it wasn't for Backyard Baseball (Go Pablo!) and Carmen Sandiego games coming into my life during elementary school, I would have only had a Purple Gameboy Color with a Pokemon Red Version to hold onto.

As the hopeful first-generation college graduate on my father's side of the family… a lot of my childhood consisted of 'getting good grades' and anything else on the checklist of top things to do to get into a good college.

2006 – Bouncing Between Friend Groups as an Athletic Nerd

Fast forward to the awkward middle school times… and off to good ol' high school.

The two rival middle schools, the Creekside Wildcats, and the Canyon Condors were now together in one high school.

We were all Castro Valley Trojans now.

I was coming from the smaller of the two middle schools, so there were so many new people in my classes that I had never seen before… but they seemed to already know one another.

I figured the easiest way to make new friends was by being involved.

And I tried a ton of things.

From the wrestling team to football to the random stint in the knitting club, basically anything I could try – I would try.

One of the checkmarks for college was participating in an organization called DECA. Basically a high school business fraternity. We would compete against students across The High School Division which included over 160,000 members in 3,200 schools.

Great…I placed Top 16 in my category. *insert sarcastic enthusiasm*

Senior Year: I'm not going to college

After reading about how Bill Gates didn't complete college, I was going to follow in his footsteps and skip college so that I too could be a massive success.

I mean c'mon…who actually wants to recycle and tailor a ton of personal statements for all the colleges our parents wanted us to go to?

I was so close to skipping all of the application dates until my parents said,

"Just apply to a few of the California State University (CSU) campuses, you don't have to go but you'll have the option if you get in."

It was easy. One application and then checkbox the college you wanted it to go to. Simple.

Well, I got into a few of them, and the next thing I remember I was in the car driving to college.

…damn, they got me.

2010 – The College Chronicles (and A lot of Top Ramen)

So I ended up at San Jose State University (SJSU).

Located no more than an hour away from where I grew up (excluding any Bay Area traffic), it was located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

That was great except for the fact that I was broke living off whatever Pell Grants and Financial Aid that I qualified for… which of course didn't cover nearly enough.

Oh! But don't forget the few hours I worked at Oakley, so that's another $90 per month.*

*At the time, the minimum wage was $8.50/hour

My routine consisted of going to class Monday – Thursday, and Friday going to the dining commons with to-go containers to stock up for the weekend.

I didn't have a meal plan on the weekends.

So if I forgot to pack food, it was going to be a hungry next couple of days if I didn't want to eat any of my Costco-sized Top Ramen packets.

Regardless of the day, I remember refreshing my Bank of America mobile app to make sure I had a grasp on my account balance.

It rarely ever changed. But paranoia does that to you.

Always floating no more than $200.

The strategy was simple: spend less than I had.

But I wasn't just surviving — I was building

Despite the Top Ramen diet, college was where I first caught the entrepreneurial bug.

I co-founded my first startup, QMi Systems, focused on increasing university food service revenue through pre-orders. It didn't become the next big thing, but it taught me more about building products and taking risks than any classroom ever could.

Around the same time, I somehow found myself elected as President & CEO of Associated Students at SJSU — essentially running the student government for a year. We launched initiatives like the Campus-to-the-City program, and I got my first real taste of leadership at scale.

Looking back, the pattern was already forming: say yes to hard things, figure it out as you go.

2014 – A Degree In Hand with Little Direction

This was the day that my parents have been waiting for, they are now proud parents of a son with a college degree… and over $18,000 of student loan debt.

But at least I got a job, right?

Don't get me wrong, it's not nearly as large of a number as someone who went to a private college or ended up pursuing a secondary degree.

But it still sucks.

Ready with a $60,000 per year job, it was time to figure out the best way to get rid of this debt.

The first thing that I had to do was get familiar with my finances.

How much money do I make after taxes per paycheck?

How much are my monthly expenses?

Do I have any money to spend for fun?

I had to make a budget and it was totally different than the budget I made while still in college.

There were so many new things to consider.

This was the first time that I had to sit down and really look at all of my bank accounts, credit cards, debts, and a paycheck in detail.

It was so confusing!

It was a lot of searching for "how to make a budget" in Google and piecing together what worked best for me, and with terms that I actually understood.

Eventually, I was able to put together the first budgeting template that I could use consistently… and still use to this day!

Sitting down and mapping everything out made it so much easier to really understand what was really going on.

And sometimes, still had to eat Top Ramen.

But looking back it was all worth it because…

…I was free from my student debt in just 13 months!

2015 – The Consulting Foundation

That $60K job? It was at Deloitte, in their Advisory practice.

For the next three years, I worked as a Senior Consultant doing management consulting in San Jose. It was intense — long hours, demanding clients, steep learning curves.

But it gave me something invaluable: a framework for thinking about complex problems.

How do you break down ambiguous challenges? How do you communicate with executives? How do you deliver under pressure?

Deloitte was my business school — except they paid me instead of the other way around.

By 2018, I had paid off my debt, built some savings, and started to feel a familiar itch. The same one I had when I started QMi Systems in college.

I wanted to build again.

2016 – The snowball effect is real…and comes with travel

The past couple of years of spending as little as possible and getting rid of my debt worked, but it definitely didn't come with the same experiences I was seeing my friends have on Instagram.

Instagram was filled with what felt like everyone taking a gap year to travel the world. And if it wasn't traveling the world – included spontaneous trips to San Diego or New York City for the weekend.

All of this on Instagram while I was really soaking in the greatness of… San Jose?

This is when I really started to dig into the world of personal finance.

All the great things that are beyond a simple monthly budget, and learning how to make my money work for me.

One of the first things that I changed my perspective on was credit cards.

They were there to help serve me, and banks should pay me to use credit cards – not the other way around.

That simple concept unlocked the world of "credit card point hacking" and finding out ways to responsibly use a credit card while unlocking the world for me.

And I really do mean the World.

With the right mixture of responsibility never carrying a balance with my credit cards and learning how the credit score formula really works,

I was able to travel the world basically for free.

The first trip that I went on was to Thailand and Vietnam with Business Class seats.

I was hooked and I was going to really double down on building the machine of personal finance.

2018 – Taking the Leap into Startups

In 2018, I made a decision that confused a lot of people: I left Deloitte to join Valcon Engineering as a founding team member.

A cleanroom cleaning company. Not exactly the sexy startup story you read about in TechCrunch.

But as Head of Operations, I got to build the entire go-to-market engine from scratch — sales, marketing, and operations. The company maintained ISO compliance certifications for clients who couldn't afford to get it wrong.

It wasn't glamorous, but it was real. And it taught me that operational excellence is what separates companies that scale from companies that crash.

The financial foundation I'd built meant I could take this risk. I wasn't desperate. I could say no to bad opportunities and yes to the right ones.

2020 – Quitting my job, a global pandemic, and… meditation?

Over the years, I was able to build off making my first budget to now building a system that has helped me:

• Travel to 16+ countries from the beaches of Bali to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro
• Witness how an investment portfolio doubled from $75,000 to $150,000 in a couple of years through a 401(k), Roth IRAs, and the stock market
• Utilize the holy grail of tax-benefit (and avoiding) Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Lay the foundation for my nephews' futures through 529 College Saving Plans
• Learn how to get started within cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum

It was almost completely automated.

To not become complacent, I reserve the first of every month as my dedicated day to recalibrate.

Most of the time this doesn't take more than an hour – or about the same amount of time as one episode on Netflix.

This automated process and investment of time really proved valuable when the events of 2020 swept the world… and I decided to quit my job to reassess really what I was spending my time on.

I didn't have another job lined up.

I barely even had a 'plan' for what I was going to do next.

Some even asked if I was a trust-fund baby… but that couldn't have been any further from the facts.

I was just responsible over the past years where I could really stand on my own two feet and work on things that I was actually passionate about.

The largest mental shift during this time for me was after reading The Miracle Morning.

It provided me the framework to work every day with prioritization of myself first – before anything else that might come throughout the day.

And from that, was the introduction of meditation into my life… and finding out what meditation app was the best for me.

If you know me well, you know that I'm a huge advocate of the grounding and mental clarity that meditation can provide.

This blog, for example, had been an idea for such a long time, but sitting down and learning how to make a blog didn't become a reality until this point.

2021 – The Hypergrowth Years

Remember when everyone was stuck at home and suddenly discovered audio chat rooms?

I joined Clubhouse as an early employee in Operations, right as the app was exploding. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, and some of the biggest names in tech (Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt, Balaji Srinivasan from Coinbase).

It was chaos in the best way possible. Strategic initiatives, resource allocation, business planning — all while trying to scale a platform that was adding millions of users.

That experience alone taught me more about operating at scale than years of consulting ever could.

After Clubhouse, I joined Fair Square Medicare — a Y Combinator (W20) healthcare startup helping seniors navigate Medicare. As Manager of BizOps, I owned People Operations, Compliance Operations, and Growth during the critical company formation phase.

The company had a 95 NPS score (the industry average for insurance brokers is 9). We served 10,000+ customers and were backed by Define Ventures, Slow Ventures, and YC.

High-stakes decisions with incomplete information. Building systems that could scale without breaking. Regulatory risk, hiring, go-to-market execution — all of it directly impacted whether the company survived.

Where I am today…

Director, Office of the CEO at GrayMatter Robotics.

After stints at Rithum (e-commerce platform serving 40,000+ brands) and DataStax (acquired by IBM in 2025), I'm now operating as a Chief of Staff to the CEO at an AI-powered robotics company.

GrayMatter Robotics builds autonomous manufacturing systems — Physical AI that's reshaping how things get made. We raised a $45M Series B and opened a 100,000 sq. ft. innovation center in Carson, California.

I build the systems, partnerships, and operating cadence that turn advanced technology into scalable, defensible businesses.

My scope is intentionally broad — I fill the gaps wherever needed. One day it's investor relations, the next it's customer engagements, the next it's driving internal initiatives. International expansion, government business, go-to-market alignment.

The work is about translating technical capability into durable business value. Moving robotics from pilots to sustained production. It's not theoretical — it's what enables companies to actually scale.

I'm drawn to hard problems, Physical AI, and teams serious about changing how things work. Startups demand high standards, clear thinking, and people who can move fluidly between strategy and execution.

Along the way, I've led teams of 30+ people and managed P&L responsibility of ~$400K/month.

But here's the thing — none of this would have been possible without the financial foundation I built in my twenties.

The ability to take risks, to say no to the wrong opportunities, to walk away from jobs that weren't aligned with where I wanted to go — that all came from mastering my money first.

Financial freedom gave me career freedom.

You can do it too!

If you are feeling like I did when I first started my personal finances journey… confused, overwhelmed, a desire for something more… you can do it.

Your why could be simply because you want to become debt-free, or something that you'll be able to do once becoming debt-free like traveling.

It all starts with taking that first step.

In my case, it was making my first budget.

The ability to see everything on one page and really understand how much I am really spending eating out using DoorDash and Uber Eats to realize the true cost of my car (payments + insurance + maintenance) every month was a huge eye-opener.

After conquering that small step, each step was easier and easier.

You got this!

A Short Thanks – To You

If you've made it this far… thank YOU.

Thank you for spending some time reading through the journey that I've been on so far.

This was actually pretty fun to sit down and write out because I've never really reflected upon the various events that have gotten me to where I am at today.

If you end up navigating to some of the other pages throughout my blog, I hope that some of the stories that I share you find helpful to wherever you are in your journey.

If there is one thing that I have learned through this process, we aren't in this alone.

If you can't think of someone to reach out to, then I can be the first to join you on your journey.

Looking forward to continuing to share this journey with you, wherever it might take us.

All the best,

Nicholas Ayala

Featured In

StartupStudios Podcast

Ep 11 — Nicholas Ayala (1hr 36mins)

My journey from college ventures to building operations at startups like Clubhouse and Fair Square Medicare. We discussed first-generation entrepreneurship and the power of small wins.

Watch Episode →

Content Creation

Beyond writing, I've also explored podcasting as a way to share ideas and have meaningful conversations.

In 2024, my friend Justin Ortiz and I launched The Nick and Justin Show — a podcast born from our weekly 1:1 talks about what's happening in the world. What started as casual conversations between friends evolved into episodes covering technology, athletics, higher education, relationships, current events, and more.

Available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

It's a reminder that sometimes the best content comes from simply sharing authentic conversations with people you trust.