Hi, my name is

Yaksh Birla.

About Me

A glimpse into my joyful life and busy mind

With a career that pivots through global finance hubs and dives deep into the heart of tech, I bring a dynamic blend of business acumen and full-stack development expertise.

In my financial services and investment banking career, I've honed a diverse skill set in scaling companies, structuring strategic deals and partnerships, and leading investment sales and advisory.

Coupling my financial services experience with hands-on technical skills has been transformative. For me, AI has unlocked endless possibilities to tackle new projects and challenges.

I use this page to share my ideas and projects, and as a creative outlet. For the occasional existential questions, here's my take on life.

Yaksh Photo

Between Work & Play

Nothing Is Linear

My career and life trajectory has been immensely rewarding through the highs and the lows. I don't believe in 'staying in my lane' and enjoy expanding my circle of competence.

2018: Graduated from UCLA
Business Economics with Honors. Dabbled in some coding projects (Python, R, C++). Sought roles at the intersection of technology & finance after graduation.
2018 to 2020: Tech Investment Banking
Worked as an analyst at William Blair, specializing in deal structuring (M&A, IPOs, Debt Recaps) and financial modeling. Areas of focus included Enterprise SaaS, Fintech and Digital Media.
2020 to Present: Fintech and Capital Markets
Capital markets specialist at Prosper Marketplace responsible for client service delivery, structured finance operations, investor partnerships and product development.
2022 to 2023: Learning Accelerated
Immersed myself in boot camps, courses, and AI-powered tools to learn programming languages, frameworks, and software development methodologies.
2023 to 2024: Modern-Day Renaissance
Finance & Investing + Code + AI + Mindset = Excited for what's to come.
Side Quests

Other Projects

Project ATLAS

In Development: Modern AI web productivity tool built with React and Next.js. (Private)
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • NextJS
  • Tailwind
  • LLMs

Value Investment Tracker

Magic Formula Stock Screener re-built with NextJS and React + some AI interactivity. (Private)
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • NextJS
  • Tailwind
  • LLMs

AI Document Q&A

AI research tool built for querying PDFs before OpenAI made it widely available.
  • Python
  • Streamlit
  • LLMs
  • Langchain

The Water Project

ML Time-series forecasting and visualization for predicting global water scarcity by 2040.
  • Python
  • Streamlit
  • Folium
  • Prophet

Finsights.AI

Tool designed to generate investment memos with one-click using AI agents. The app broke.
  • Python
  • Streamlit
  • LLMs
  • Langchain

Global Financial Inclusion Project

General Assembly Data Science Capstone to assess financial inclusion in emerging markets using ML.
  • Python
  • Scikit-Learn
  • XGBoost
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