Friends first
How two best friends from Hopkins became a research lab, and the advisors who keep them honest.
Sam and Alvin met at Johns Hopkins through a roommate and stayed friends for more than ten years. Alvin went back to Taiwan, served in the military and worked in education, sales and marketing. Sam stayed in DC, then moved to New York and LA to chase music and an early-stage career in sales.
They started consulting for local startups, with weekly syncs with Sam’s sister, their first mentor. Recapping a CES road trip to her, they found the problem they could solve together: AI tools that help non-native and non-technical English speakers scale their businesses. That became MM LABS, then Vox, now Perebel.
