Kashif Syed
Founder, StarNova HQ Labs · Building a 10-product AI ecosystem · Ex-Google, 14 yrs enterprise engineering
Hyderabad, India
I'm Kashif — a software engineer with ~14 years of enterprise engineering (telecom orchestration at Lumen Technologies for clients like Walmart and Amazon) and a year at Google in Commerce Risk Operations. Today I'm building StarNova HQ Labs full-time: a bootstrapped ecosystem of 10 AI products — 5 live in production, 5 at MVP/demo stage — built zero-to-launch in about 8 months. Live products include AURA, AI Phone Finder, StarNova Studio (an in-browser video editor with on-device Whisper captions), Qylva (frictionless digital utilities) and the AI Agency Bundle Kit. Stack I work in daily: Gemini (Imagen, Veo), Claude, Firebase/Firestore, Supabase, Cloud Run, Netlify, Cloudflare, Razorpay, transformers.js and ffmpeg — with Antigravity and Claude Code as my build tools. At DevFest I'd love to talk about shipping AI products solo, agentic coding workflows, Gemini in production, and AI for creators. Also open to meeting investors, collaborators and builders — come say hi!
Founder & Builder
StarNova HQ Labs
- Building a bootstrapped ecosystem of 10 AI products solo — 5 live in production, 5 at MVP/demo stage — shipped zero-to-launch in ~8 months
- Launched AURA (aura.starnovahq.com) on Cloud Run with Razorpay payments and a Firestore credit system
- Built StarNova Studio, a browser-based video editor with in-browser Whisper captions via transformers.js
- Shipped AI Phone Finder (live credits system), Qylva (frictionless digital utilities) and the AI Agency Bundle Kit
- Stack: Gemini (Imagen, Veo), Claude, Firebase/Firestore, Supabase, Netlify, Cloudflare, Razorpay, ffmpeg; Antigravity + Claude Code for agentic development
Software Engineer — Telecom Orchestration
Lumen Technologies
- Engineered telecom orchestration solutions for enterprise clients including Walmart and Amazon
- Most recent role in ~14 years of enterprise software engineering
Commerce Risk Operations
- One year in Google's Commerce Risk Operations team
Live AI product in the StarNova HQ ecosystem, running on Cloud Run with Razorpay payments and a Firestore-backed credit system.
StarNova Studio
Browser-based video editor with fully in-browser Whisper captioning via transformers.js — no server-side transcription needed.
AI Phone Finder
AI-powered phone recommendation tool, live in production with Razorpay payments and a credits system.
Indian streetwear brand (est. 2026, Hyderabad) — live Shopify store selling oversized cotton tees with print-on-demand fulfilment, Razorpay UPI and international card payments, and an affiliate program. Includes Novakart Design Lab, an AI-assisted T-shirt design studio.
EPGDM — Business Analytics
IFIM Business School
B.Tech — Computer Science
JNTU Hyderabad
Attendee · Oct 24, 2026