Jake Moshel

In December 2024, when I was 14, I founded Apex, a mountain-bike phone-case brand, with $16 for a domain and a one-dollar-a-month Shopify subscription. Over the next 18 months, it did more than $30,000 in revenue↗ before I sold it in June 2026. Andrew from Acquire.com had me on his podcast ↗ to talk about how it all played out. The team there is great!

About three months after founding Apex, I started Downhill Demons, a separate mountain-bike media page on Instagram. It reached 2 million views in 30 days↗ on Instagram alone and hit similar numbers on TikTok. It became a growth channel for Apex and was included in the sale.

In May 2025, while Apex was running, I started a clothing brand. I developed a new product↗ and got it manufactured. Its content passed 500,000 views in about a week, but the product took roughly a year to develop and launched after the hype was gone. I kept it low-priority once it was clearly failing, but I learned the logistics behind a larger drop and why speed matters. Next time, I'll pay rush fees and keep up with the hype!

By August 2025, I was also doing website consulting, CRO, and general design work. I made a couple thousand dollars. It was a smaller experiment, but a good time and a good experience.

At 16, after selling Apex, I interned at Thera, a YC-backed payroll fintech. That summer was formative. I learned how startups operate on a remote-first team, met people at Thera and other startups, and got to do a little bit of everything. It helped me see which work I enjoy and want to specialize in.

One of my other passion projects has been building an executive assistant with my Mac mini Hermes agent. I love how its harness forces self-improvement. My favorite use is connecting it to my Granola meeting notes so it can pull together what I've learned. I text it through iMessage like a friend.

In February 2026, my team became a finalist in the global TKS × Lovable challenge after shipping an onboarding flow, template gallery, and first-build system. TKS has been a great experience for my personal growth. Its executive team saw our deck, and that's how I met my now co-founder for Novix.

Apex wasn't my first time building. I sold Roblox logos at 10 and was a game developer, then had a product for dog owners manufactured at 12.

I also explored AI and Shopify by analyzing conversion patterns, building an AI SEO auditor, and making my first Shopify app.

Now I'm building Novix AI, which turns customer and developer issues into sandbox-tested pull requests using a team's existing stack.